


someone to stay

by thewingway



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Denial of Feelings, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Fluff, F/M, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2019-10-17 10:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 45,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17558585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewingway/pseuds/thewingway
Summary: a year later, he comes home--it's literally just a getting back together fic with sadness and accidental dog acquisition. what else does anyone need to know





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing this since September and figured it's time to actually start posting it now since it's edited and ready to go. After ifs2 I was talking with apple-grass-and-smiles and lenalovesironfist on tumblr, and somehow what came out of that was... over 45k of an ironwing getting back together fic. Apparently that's how this works. I would never have actually gotten this written without Em and Lena - they give me plot and I write it, it's a symbiotic relationship - so anyway shoutout to them for being the best <3
> 
> The plan is to post Sundays and Wednesdays. 
> 
> title is from the song Someone to Stay by Vancouver Sleep Clinic because I couldn't come up with anything better
> 
> tumblr: the-wingway

The drive from the airport back into the city feels like the longest drive in the world, the seconds slowly bleeding into each other in a haze of bright city lights that are achingly familiar and strangely welcoming. It’s nearly two in the morning and the streets are more silent than usual, quieting more as the busier city fades into the beginnings of Chinatown. He taps his fingers against his thigh and turns his gaze to the stained carpet floor, startling when the car pulls to a stop sooner than he expected it too. All he can do then is stare out of the window to look at the shadowed old sign hanging on the building they’d parked in front of. 

_ Chikara Dojo _ . 

Danny hesitates for a moment to draw in a steadying breath, listening to the rumble of the car before he pushes himself up off of the seat and out into the bitter cold, dragging his bags with him. He thanks the driver for getting him at such a late hour before he steps back from the car, turning around to face the building. There’s no one on the sidewalks, no one even in sight, and once the driver pulls away he’s left standing out alone in the quiet night. 

It’s strange being  _ here _ again. The concept of  _ home _ is something Danny has been trying to figure out for a long time; once he thought it could be K’un Lun, and then he thought that it could be New York. He thought that maybe he’d found it in this building, but the months away had made him realize that  _ home _ is not this place, but rather the person inside -  _ Colleen _ . It had all made him realize that he really had left a piece of himself behind when he’d gone, and now he has no idea how she’ll react to him being back. 

_ I probably should have told her _ , he thinks, rubbing his hands together in an attempt to warm them up, but it’s a useless effort. He picks up his bags again and forces himself to start heading for the door, trying to ignore the mounting pressure in his chest.  _ Maybe this is all a mistake and maybe she’ll be pissed.  _

_ Don’t think about that _ . 

He takes a deep breath before he opens the door and steps inside to the only somewhat welcoming, familiar narrow hallway, trying to push down the creeping anxiety in his head as he continues through the hall. He takes the steps up to the top floor at a fairly slow pace, as if prolonging this will somehow help make it easier, though he knows it won’t.  _ She’s probably not even awake _ , he realizes, something that hadn’t actually occurred to him yet. 

And then he’s outside the door of the dojo-turned-apartment, and it’s a little hard to breathe. It’s been  _ months _ since he last stood here, and being here now just brings back all the tangled, complicated feelings of it all. Of packing a bag, of writing a letter with a shaking hand, of wondering if he was making the biggest mistake of his life while he’d poured his heart into the ink words on the page. He remembers shutting the door behind him for the last time, part of him praying that Colleen would return home  _ right then _ so he couldn’t leave. But he  _ had _ . He had left her, and maybe he’s ruined everything, he’s not even sure anymore. 

Another deep breath. 

His hand tightens into a fist at his side for a moment before he moves to set the bags down on the floor. Then he lifts a gently trembling hand and  _ knocks _ . Not a loud knock, and not long - the kind that would really only be heard if she were already awake. 

He stands there, his heart beating too fast against his chest, forcing himself to continue breathing evenly.  _ If she doesn’t answer I’ll just come back in the morning, it’ll be okay _ , he thinks, though remains unconvinced. 

He’s almost afraid to face her, though at the same time wants nothing more than to see her again. Months of only texts or occasional phone calls hadn’t been at all the same, even though that’s more than he’d expected from her. He doesn’t think she’s still  _ angry _ with him, not really, but maybe she is.  _ Maybe I should just leave.  _

For a second he considers knocking just one more time, hand half-raised to do so, before he decides against it.  _ I’ll just come back in the morning _ . He reaches down to grab his bags again, and that’s when he hears the rough  _ slide _ of the first lock, followed by the  _ click _ of the second. Before he really has a moment to think, she’s opening the door. She seems confused until she realizes it’s  _ him _ , and for a moment she stands in the cracked open doorway just staring at him, seeming both surprised and something else, something he can’t place. 

“Danny?” her voice has a note of disbelief to it, like she doesn’t think this is real. 

_ It’s good to hear her voice _ . 

“Hey, Colleen,” he says, resisting every instinct that tells him to reach out for her. 

She looks  _ tired _ , that’s what he notices first - there’s dark circles under her eyes, and her hair is a little messy when she shoves it back from her face in an annoyed movement while she opens the door wider. She’s in sleep clothes and barefoot when she steps out into the hallway in front of him, and it’s harder now to breathe, because she’s really  _ right here _ again. Because he’s  _ home _ . 

Before he can get another word out she’s stepping up to him and wrapping her arms around his neck, pushing up onto her toes to tighten her grip in a movement that throws most of her weight into him. He almost laughs with relief as he circles his arms around her, pulling her into a careful embrace, shutting his eyes as his senses are completely overwhelmed by  _ her _ . How warm she is pressed against him, the familiar smell of her shampoo, the feeling of her tucking her face against his neck while she tightens her arms around him and steps impossibly closer. 

He tries to blink back the sudden tears as he holds her and he thinks he fails, but that hardly matters because she’s  _ right here _ and she’s  _ in his arms _ and if he had a choice, he’d never let her go again. 

“Sorry it’s so late,” he says when he finds the words, and she just lets out a sound that’s  _ almost _ a laugh, which he can’t help but smile at. 

“I wasn’t asleep,” she replies, slowly moving her arms to wrap around his chest instead, so he loosens his grip to let her adjust. He resists the urge to press a kiss to her head, because he’s pretty sure that wouldn’t be  _ okay _ , though the feeling of her in his arms is more than enough for now. 

When she leans back into his chest to hug him tighter, he rests his chin on top of her head and shuts his eyes, wishing he could capture this moment and hold onto it forever. 

“I missed you,” he says before he can stop himself, but she just leans into him a little more at his words, though she doesn’t reply. 

After a minute she finally steps back, pulling out of his embrace  _ almost _ a little awkwardly, looking down at the floor. It hits him, then, that she’s not quite the same as when he left - which should’ve been obvious, he thinks, but it hadn’t been. He looks down at her, notes the tired sort of way she’s standing, traces the line of the tattoo down her arm with his eyes where it stands out so clearly. It looks like it’s healed well, and seems somehow both out of place yet fitting, which doesn't really make a lot of sense. Of course, their situation never really did. 

“When did you get back?” She asks after a moment, breaking the silence as she steps back into the apartment, leaving the door wide open in a clear invitation. 

He picks his bags up again and follows her into the mostly dark apartment, shutting the door behind him and watching her as she moves to turn on a couple of lights. After a moment’s hesitation, he sets his bags down by the door before following her further into the room. 

“Uh, about an hour ago, I think? This is the first place I came,” he admits. “It didn’t occur to me that you might not be awake until I was almost upstairs,” he adds with a slight chuckle, which gets him a little smile from her. 

“Lucky for you, I still don’t have a consistent sleep schedule,” she points out, which,  _ fair _ . Neither does he - they never really  _ had _ , honestly, and for him two in the morning had always been spent either out on the streets or curled up with Colleen, usually not asleep though. 

“Yeah, I just… I wanted to do this first. Come see you,” he starts, and  _ this _ is where it gets uncomfortable, where all that aching, strangling guilt starts creeping up on him again. “This was most important.”

She doesn’t quite seem to know what to say to that, and he watches as she leans back against the counter and looks down at the floor, clearly avoiding his gaze. That hurts him more than he wants to admit. 

“For what it’s worth, I missed you too,” she replies after a strained moment, finally looking up and flashing him a quick, tired sort of smile that makes his heart ache. There’s a reluctance to it now that was never there  _ before _ , and she’s fiddling with the hem of her shirt and still won’t make eye contact. 

“I’m sorry-” 

“Danny, let’s not do this in the middle of the night, okay?” She cuts him off with rushed words as she looks up at him, and there’s tension in her body and a tired look on her face, so he just nods. “There’ll be time in the morning for that.”

“Okay, yeah, that’s a much better plan,” he agrees quickly. “I can come back in the morning.” 

“Don’t be stupid. It’s  _ late _ . Just take the sofa, okay?” She says, in the sort of tone where he knows it’s definitely best not to argue with her so he just nods again, and  _ honestly _ he’d rather stay the night here anyway. He’s not exactly in a hurry to be away from her again; a year was already too much time. 

That’s when he decides that it gets…  _ awkward _ , he thinks, because things aren’t normal or the way they used to be. The silence isn’t comfortable anymore, not as much as it normally would be, and instead there’s a clear tension of unspoken words and hurt that he  _ hates _ . His immediate instinct is to step up and hug her again, wrap her in his arms, but he  _ knows _ Colleen, knows that she wouldn’t be okay with that right now. Instead he stands a few feet away from the bedroom door while she heads in to, presumably, grab spare blankets. 

When she returns she’s got a stack of blankets in her arms which she passes over to him, and when his hand brushes against hers as he takes them he hesitates, unmoving, wishing again that he could pull her into a hug. But then she lets go of the blankets and steps back, wrapping her arms across her stomach and looking down, so he just holds them against his chest as he takes another small step back. 

“Thank you, Colleen.” 

“We’ll talk in the morning, figure things out then, okay?” she says, and she’s still not  _ quite _ looking at him, which just continues to make that miserable guilty feeling press tighter against his chest. 

“We should just try to get some sleep for now,” he agrees, taking a step toward the door to grab his bags. 

She says something else that he doesn’t quite catch, voice low and soft and he figures it’s something along the lines of  _ goodnight _ , but she retreats back into the bedroom before he can figure out what she’d said. He doesn’t try to stop her, or prolong the conversation, because he thinks this is what she needs - to step away for now. 

They’d talked while he’d been gone at least somewhat about their situation, but he’s not naive - he  _ knows _ that he hurt her, and that maybe this might be hurting her even more. The thought of doing that again is horrible, knowing that he might be causing her pain, and he tries not to linger on it.  _ Just breathe don’t think about that _ , he tells himself as he adjusts his hold on the blankets.  _ She’s right it’s late and we can talk in the morning, everything will be okay _ . 

He sets his bags down on the table by the sofa, sitting down and removing his shoes and coat with tired movements. The apartment is dark and too quiet, but nearly untouched. There’s the normal signs of living there, though more subtle than before with only one person there, but the furniture is all where it usually was. His record player and albums are all exactly where they’d been when he’d left, and something about that makes him sad. 

Sighing, he takes another moment to just sit in the silence and  _ breathe _ before he stands up again. He brushes his teeth at the kitchen sink, gets a glass of water, and manages to find something relatively comfortable and not dirty from traveling in his bag that he changes into. 

After opening up a couple blankets and spreading them out over the sofa he lays down, pulling them around him and shutting his eyes, listening to the sounds of cars outside and sirens off in the distance. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed those sounds until now, listening to them in the otherwise quiet room. The cities he’d been in had all been noisy as well in their own ways, each distinct and differing from the next, never quite the same as New York. And all of them missing something important, something crucial to them feeling _right_. He glances over at the bedroom door, relaxing slowly knowing that Colleen is just on the other side of it.  
  
_It’ll be okay_. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they talk

He wakes to early morning light spilling through the windows and a nervous twist in his stomach. The shift from asleep to awake is jarring, and it takes him a minute to remember where he is. He’s gotten so used to waking up to the movement of a plane that the unmoving sofa is disconcerting for a second before he relaxes, rubbing at his eyes tiredly with one hand while reaching for his glass of water with the other. He sits up with a slight groan - this is not the most comfortable sofa to sleep on - pushing the blankets away and letting the cold air help wake him up.

That nervous feeling doesn’t ease, and it’s not really an unexpected feeling, it’s just uncomfortable. He has no idea what to expect from the inevitable conversation with Colleen, how it might go. All he knows with certainty is that he wants to apologize. He had before, while he’d been gone, but he wants to in person. Not necessarily for them having to be apart - he’s been coming to terms with the fact that it’s been good for him, and hopefully her too - but for leaving the way he had. _That wasn’t fair to her_ , he thinks, far from the first time, anxiously fidgeting his hands before he stands up.

It’s still early enough that she realistically might not be up yet, though he takes a moment to listen anyway. After some hesitation he decides to go ahead and start boiling water for tea, because that’s something normal that he can do, and maybe it will alleviate some of the unavoidable awkwardness. It’s also a _distraction_ , something to focus on, which he what he needs right now.

Everything is in the same place it had always been, so it takes only moment for him to get what he needs and start the water boiling. He brushes his teeth again while he waits on the water, and leans against the counter when he finishes, looking down at the floor and trying not to think too hard about the situation. Realistically, he thinks it’ll be fine - she _had_ said that she’d missed him, too, so he hopes it’ll be okay. That doesn’t stop the persistent, anxious feeling that it _won’t_ be.

He’s just poured water into the ready cups when he hears the bedroom door slide open, and Colleen steps out to join him in the kitchen, standing on the opposite side of the island.

“Morning,” he says, trying to keep his tone light, not entirely sure _where_ to start the conversation or if she’s even ready. When he turns around to look at her she’s already halfway avoiding eye contact, picking at the sleeves of her jacket. He wordlessly passes her a cup of tea, and she murmurs a quick _thanks_ before adjusting the tea bag.

_It’s morning and we should talk and I should just go right into it,_ he thinks, but that’s quickly followed by _maybe that’s a bad idea though_.

He sighs. He’s going to have a headache before this is over.

He puts his attention into stirring the tea bag around in his mug while Colleen sits down, waits until he notices that she seems more relaxed, though clearly still tired. He doesn’t know how to say it all - the words are caught in his throat and looking at her doesn’t really make it any easier, not when she won’t look at him.

“I have to be at the center in a little bit,” she finally speaks up, the only thing she’s really said since she’d come into the room, and it’s too loud in the uncomfortable silence. “So if we’re talking we need to now.”

If it were anyone else, it probably would’ve come off as rude or impatient, but he knows she doesn’t mean it that way. If anything it just sounds _tired_. He just nods, wraps his hands around the mug and focuses on that, on the warmth creeping into him, before looking up at her again.

“I’m sorry.”

He thinks that she _almost_ laughs at that, catches the briefest sort of upturn to her mouth before it’s gone, and she’s looking down at her cup again. “Danny, we’ve been over this, _several times_.”

“I know, it’s just - I wanted to tell you in person. You deserve to hear it in person instead of over a text or a phone call with a signal that kept cutting out,” he says, taking a steadying breath while he tries to collect his thoughts better. “The way I left you was shitty and I’m sorry for that.”

“Yeah, a letter _was_ pretty shitty,” she agrees, and he can’t tell if her tone is still tired or more irritated. “But we’ve been over this. You needed to leave, and from what I’ve gathered, it’s been good for you. Sometimes people need space, there’s… not anything wrong with that.” She looks like she wants to say more but doesn’t, just takes a drink and still won’t look him in the eye. “It’s been weird without you here, after so long, but I guess… maybe it’s been good for me too.”

He’d _hoped_ it would be, that having some space and time to think would be good, but the way she says it almost has a sort of finality to it that makes him nervous. She says it in a way that doesn’t sound entirely honest, either.

“I’ve had a _lot_ of time to think the past few months, about where we went wrong. Where _I_ went wrong.” Danny starts slowly, that aching guilt pushing at his chest again. “I did a lot wrong, asking you to train me, asking you to take the iron fist, despite you not wanting either of those things.”

“Danny, the fault isn’t all with you, so just - don’t _do_ that thing, you always do, taking all of the blame. I wasn’t exactly the best to you during all of that, either. We _both_ could’ve been better people,” she points out, which he knows makes sense, though it doesn’t make the guilt go away.

“Sometimes I just wish that I could go back and change things, do it _right_ .” The words make his heart ache _more_. There’s no going back, no changing it, even though he wonders sometimes how they would’ve done if nothing had gone wrong.

“We can’t, but I understand the feeling,” Colleen replies, finally meeting his eyes. She looks worn and sad, and he wishes he could reach out and at least take her hand.

“I hurt you,” he says, because it’s _true_ . Neither of them can deny that. “That’s the worst part of all of this. That’s what I’m sorry for the _most_.”

He remembers getting on the plane, he remembers when it took off, when the ache in his chest was nearly unbearable and he finally had a moment to truly think about that he was doing. About the fact that he was leaving Colleen when maybe that was the last thing she needed, wishing he could convince himself that this would be good for her too. He had meant what he’d said to Ward with every piece of his heart and soul - about wanting to become the man Colleen deserves - and that had been a good motivation, made the hardest days easier, knowing that he was going to come home. He won’t lie about it, it was good for him to be away and to think. But looking back now, he just wishes he’d done it differently, found a way to do it where it wouldn’t hurt anyone like he had.

“You did.” Her voice cracks just slightly. “I wish you’d told me in person, at least given me a chance to say goodbye, instead of leaving before I could. I…” she pauses, like she’s not entirely sure what to say, before she continues. “I wouldn’t have wanted to come with you. That… it wouldn’t have worked out. You were right about one thing, us needing space to think and breathe. Maybe not half a world apart space, but… the _way_ you left, it-” she cuts off, looking down. “It doesn’t matter,” she says instead of whatever she _had_ been planning to say.

“I should’ve. I should’ve stayed and waiting for you to come back, and _explained_ , instead of just leaving. I don’t know, I guess it just… seemed like the best way to leave, because if you had asked me to stay I _would’ve_. Without hesitation. And I think things might have just gotten worse.” That had been the hardest thing to come to terms with - the reality that they had to be apart. As much as he hated it, he knew the alternative probably would’ve been them never being able to fix things, slowly running their relationship into the ground. But after so long spent with her, at each other’s side through everything - it had made her absence even more obvious, more aching.

“I’m not mad at you for it anymore, Danny, if _that’s_ what you’re worried about. I was, at first, but we have been talking, you’ve explained. That’s… past us, now. I’m not saying I’m okay with it but it _did_ happen, I’ve come to terms with that.”

He quietly lets out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding, some of the tension melting out of his body at her words. His worst fear in all of this had been that she’d be angry with him still - which, of course, would have been perfectly justified, and he wouldn’t have argued with her if she _were_ , but he’s still relieved.

“I just want to make sure we’re _okay_ . With everything that happened I’m not expecting everything to just go back to how we were, I just… you’re still the person who means the world to me.” _Maybe I shouldn’t have said that_. “And if space is what you still need right now, I completely understand. Again, I just needed to apologize to you in person.”

She smiles, just a little, enough that more of the anxiety in his chest eases a little. “We’ve had plenty of space already, don’t you think? Let’s just take it slow, okay? Like I’ve already told you before, _apology accepted_.” She says, smiling a little more, which he can’t help but return. “Meanwhile, I have to get ready to leave, so…”

“Of course. I’ve got things to figure out, anyway, so I’ll be out of here in a minute.” He quickly drinks the last of his tea while she moves to rinse out her own empty cup.

He heads back over to the sofa and starts folding up the blankets, setting them in a neat pile on the table before he sits down to tug his shoes back on. Colleen is waiting near the doorway to the bedroom watching him as he grabs his bags and walks over.

When he moves to stand in front of her, he stretches out one arm in a quiet invitation and she steps forward into his embrace with only a moment of hesitation. He wraps his arm around her and she rests her head against his shoulder, hugging him back. She’s warm and comforting, her face tucked against his chest, and he tightens his arm and holds onto her for maybe a few seconds too long. He releases her and steps back before the urge to press a kiss to her forehead becomes too strong, because that wouldn’t be his best idea.  
  
After a quick goodbye he heads out of the apartment and back down the stairs, feeling far more light and calm than when he’d arrived. _This is good, we’ll be okay_ , he thinks, and for the first time in a while, he finds that he can truly believe that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> does anyone else ever still get annoyed that this even has to happen in the first place because they should've still been together anyway


	3. Chapter 3

It’s the sort of morning that doesn’t really feel quite real, where it doesn’t feel like anything outside the walls of her apartment are there. She knows that it’s snowing outside, that it’s bitterly cold, but inside there’s soft light, warmth, cups of tea sitting in front of her and Danny sitting beside her. The counter is a mess of papers, notebooks, and printed-out photographs, all little threads of her history waiting to be untangled. 

If she’s being honest, it’s mostly just a headache. 

It had been Danny’s tentative suggestion to go over the information he’d found and the notes he’d taken  _ in person _ , though it had been her suggestion to do so in her apartment. He’d shown up a little while ago with everything, tracking a little snow into the room and looking a little bit guilty about that fact. But after the initial moment of awkwardness he’d started to make tea while Colleen had unpacked the bag he’d brought, and that was that; they had something to focus on, so it wasn’t awkward or strange or anything of the kind anymore. They’d been working at it for the past hour or so in a comfortable silence. 

After a bit Danny grabs both of their now-empty cups and gets up to go make more tea, so she takes a moment to look away from all of the papers, rubbing at her eyes tiredly with ink-smudged fingers. She does want to figure this out, she  _ does _ , but right now she’s getting a little bit sick of it all and the words are starting to run together in her head. (and she won’t tell him, but trying to read Danny’s handwriting is a whole specific headache of its own). It’s still too early, and they’ve not talked much at all in the past half hour while working, and she’s ready to take a break. 

She rests her elbows on the counter and her head on her hands, watching Danny quietly as he finds another couple of tea bags, something different this time. It’s  _ strange _ having him here again after so long, but under such different circumstances. Because she remembers times like with with Danny before, when this apartment had still been  _ theirs _ , when they’d had a life here together. In similar situations to this, staying up too late into the night working on whatever they had to be doing, mostly in a silence that was comfortable or relaxed. Or nights where they’d just sit at the counter together with tea and talk about anything and everything that came to mind, sometimes teasing, sometimes ending in one of them playfully tugging the other off to bed. If she’s being honest with herself she  _ misses _ those nights, misses how they felt and how the world had always seemed so right in those moments. 

_ Stop, right now _ , she tells herself warily, trying to push away all of those thoughts and feelings and the itch of frustration in her chest.  _ It’s not like that anymore _ \- she hopes that if she continues to remind herself of this enough times that it will eventually get easier, but now with everything all  _ wrong _ and uncertain, being in the apartment with him is harder than she’d thought it would be. 

After another moment of silence she finally speaks up in an attempt to distract herself. 

“Are you glad that you’re back now?” She asks, genuinely curious, and Danny half turns for a moment to look at her before putting his attention back to the tea. She watches him for a moment, notes that there’s a newer but small scar on the back of his right hand now, notices that his hair has grown out more again to the point that the curls are starting to come back. 

“Yeah, I am,” he replies after a second’s hesitation. “I missed New York more than I thought I would. Even with all the noise and the chaos and the shit that tends to go down here, I missed it. Beats being stuck on a plane with Ward for hours at a time any day,” he adds with a laugh. 

Colleen smiles at that, just a little, but she has to agree. She’s really not all that sure how they’d managed to not kill each other during the months that they were gone - she knows that she wouldn’t have survived that long being stuck with Ward.

“I did manage to get my job back with Albert, though, so that’s been nice. He gave me all kinds of shit for leaving in the first place but we’re good now, I think,” he says as he brings the cups back, hanging her one before he settles back down on the stool next to her. She tries to ignore how aware she is of him next to her, and more firmly pushes away at the part of her that still instinctively wants to lean into him, something that she wouldn’t have hesitated to do  _ before _ . 

“Oh, he was not happy when he found out that you just… left. He called me asking where you were, so I had to explain that,” Colleen says, giving him a look that makes him look at least somewhat guilty.  _ That _ had been an interesting day. 

“Okay, so I probably should’ve told him. I wasn’t really thinking about it at the time.” he just shakes his head a little. “But it all worked out. I’ve got a hotel room that I’m staying in right now but it’s not close, I need to start looking for someplace else,” he says absentmindedly as he grabs one of the notebooks on the counter. 

She’s not really sure why this surprises her - the fact that he’s living in a hotel right now. It shouldn’t, she  _ knows _ he never had a different apartment or somewhere else to stay, it just bothers her a little more than she cares to admit. She knows how much having a  _ home _ means to Danny, and a hotel is about as far from that as you can get. Frowning a little, she turns her attention back to the paper she’d been looking at before, not actually reading any of it. 

She can tell that he’s watching her, can feel his eyes on her, but she doesn’t look over, doesn’t want the questions. Instead she pretends to put her full attention back to the papers, rubbing at her temple as if that’ll ease the headache that’s quickly becoming a sharper sort of pain. 

Abruptly and without warning, Danny shuts the notebook he’d been looking at with a noise that’s too loud in the silence, and she finally looks over and watches as he starts to stack up the books and gather some stray papers together, including the one that she’d been looking at. 

“What are you doing?” 

He pauses, taking a moment to meet her eyes. “It’s time for a break,” he says, giving her a tired sort of half smile. “We’ve been at it long enough, and I have to leave for work in a minute anyway.” 

“Okay,” she agrees, because a break  _ is _ a good idea, and she wants to get medicine for the headache before it gets any worse. “I’ll be right back.” 

She gets up and heads for the bedroom, quickly ducking into the bathroom and opening one of the drawers and grabbing the bottle towards the front. She shakes two pills out onto her hand and turns on the faucet for water, taking them quickly. For a minute she just stands there, taking a second to breathe and try to sort out her thoughts before she goes back out to the kitchen. 

Danny is checking something on his phone when she joins him again at the counter, grabbing her tea and taking a sip even though it’s really too hot to drink still, wrapping her hands around the warm mug. He’s quiet as he answers a text and she looks away, staring down at the floor and wondering if she should even suggest what had come to mind.  _ He’s going to leave in a minute and if I don’t say anything I’ll probably regret it _ , she thinks, shutting her eyes and letting out a tired sort of sigh. After a moment’s hesitation, she finally speaks up. 

“Danny… you know you’re welcome to come stay here again,” she starts slowly, pointedly trying to avoid looking at him because she doesn’t really want to see his immediate reaction to her words, though she does see him turn towards her as she talks. “It’s close to your job, you wouldn’t have to pay for a hotel room…” 

“I don’t want to intrude like that,” Danny replies, and she finally looks over at him, notes the tired and unsure look on his face. “Not after everything that happened.” 

“It’s not intruding if I’m the one offering,” she points out.  _ Why am I trying to convince him? _ She wonders briefly before she pushes that thought away, not wanting to linger on it. 

“That’s fair, I guess, but I still don’t know if it’s the best idea, and-”

“There’s room, Danny. You’re going to be at work most days now anyway, right? It’s not like you’d be in the way or anything,” she says, taking a steadying breath. She  _ hates _ the uncomfortable tension between them that makes her just want to hide from everything, and honestly almost hates the way he looks at her now with a poorly-concealed sense of  _ loss _ . 

She’s not entirely sure  _ why _ she suggested it in the first place. Danny being back has been easy so far simply because he hasn’t been around her all that much, and their brief time spent together over the past week was always careful. But now she’s invited him to  _ live with her _ again, and she thinks that if she just ignores her feelings on the matter that she can convince herself it’s only for the conveniency. It would be easier to work on all the information he got in Asia if everything is in one place, it’s a better location for him for his job. And maybe that’s all there really is to it, anyway -  _ just because it would be convenient, nothing else _ . (If she were to say it out loud, even she would laugh at how unbelievable that sounds.)

When she looks back up at him and meets his eyes, she can tell that he’s considering it. Danny has always been easy for her to read, and now is no different - there’s a furrow to his brow and his lips are pressed together, but his eyes are soft, his body relaxed. He’s not tense anymore, and no longer trying to continue arguing that it’s not a good idea. 

“How about I think about it? But if I do this, I’m helping pay for everything. Utilities, food, all of it. And I’m sleeping on the sofa.” He insists, which she’d expected, because it’s  _ Danny _ . 

“Okay."

He looks away for a moment, glancing down at his phone before he stands up. “I have to leave now, but I’ll think about it and get back to you tonight, okay?” 

“Sounds like a plan.” 

He’s quiet as he pulls his shoes back on, tucking his phone into his pocket and grabbing his coat before he heads towards the door. He pauses after opening it, turning back to look at her. “I’m going to leave the notes and stuff here for now, if that’s okay.” And after another brief pause. “I’ll see you soon.”

Colleen watches as he leaves, feeling again that odd sort of ache in her chest that she’s been pointedly trying to ignore since the moment he showed up at two in the morning a week ago. The apartment is far too quiet without him there despite him only having just left, something that she’d gotten better at ignoring while he was away but is all too obvious now that she’s had moments with him here again. 

She stands there for a moment, not really sure what to do with herself, before she decides to go ahead and move all the papers and such over to the table since it’s used less. She grabs the bag he’d brought it over in first and sets it down, only to notice that Danny’s hoodie and gloves are still sitting there.  _ He needs those _ , she thinks as she drops the bag on the table to grab those instead, quickly pulling her shoes on and running out the door before really thinking about it, hoping she can catch him in time. 

She’s bit by a rush of bitter cold air as she steps outside, and everything is a haze of white flurries as the wind kicks up again. There’s still too many people out despite the weather, and it takes her a moment before she spots Danny. She wraps her arms around herself and hugs the hoodie to her chest as she starts after him, cursing herself for not grabbing  _ her _ coat before going after him. 

“Danny!” she calls, and a moment later she sees him stop and glance back so she slows down. When he meets her eyes she lifts the jacket and gloves up enough for him to see, and he nods and quickly turns and heads back towards her. 

“Didn’t even realize I’d forgotten those,” he says when he reaches her. “Thank you. Would’ve been a miserable day without them.”

“Well, now you won’t completely freeze to death,” she replies, passing him the forgotten items. 

His hand lingers against her’s as he grabs the hoodie and gloves and she tries not to think about that, or about the fact that he’s watching her again with that almost sad sort of smile she’s seen more often than she wants to, or about the fact that it’s snowing and she’s not got a coat on and she’s still standing out here with him despite that. For a moment, again, none of it feels quite real. But then he’s taking a step back, looking almost awkwardly at the ground as he does. 

“I have to go, I can’t be late,” he finally says. She doesn’t fail to notice how he can’t quite meet her eyes as he says this, taking another step away. “I’ll see you soon, though.”

And then he’s gone, heading back down the sidewalk, tugging his gloves on as he walks. Colleen watches him for a moment before heading back for the door, rubbing her hands together as if that’ll get any of the warmth back into them. When she looks back for just a brief moment she notices that he’s looking back too, meets his eyes for just a second more before he’s gone behind a group of people. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> theyre in love


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a shorter one today

When Danny gets off of work early that evening he takes the longer route back to Colleen’s apartment. It’s an attempt to have more time to clear his head, to think about what to tell her and what decision to make about her offer. The longer walk doesn’t help like he’d hoped it would, instead all he can think about is how his fingers and nose are a little bit numb from the cold. He’s had all day to think about her offer and despite that, he almost feels more unsure about the whole situation than he did that morning. He has no idea what to tell her.

It’s not that he’s  _ opposed _ to being around her more - it’s the opposite, really. Months away had been far too long spent missing her, and he’d love to catch up on all of the lost time. What worries him is what will happen if they  _ are _ together more, if that’s something they can handle. It would be a blatantly obvious lie to say that he’s not still in love with her, he never really  _ stopped _ , but he wonders if being around her more will just make that harder for both of them. 

But, well, so what if it’s still hard for him to be around her because it’s no longer like before, and won’t be again, and so what if it’s hard to not want to kiss her or hold her in his arms still. This isn’t something he would allow to ruin their friendship - as tentative and fragile as it is at the moment - he cares about her too much for that.  _ I can pretend to not want things to be like before _ , he thinks, though unconvinced.  _ I can hide that _ . 

The problem always circling back to that he  _ left _ , wrote a letter and flew across the world and left her behind. He hadn’t wanted to, but he  _ had _ \- and there’s no changing that. And maybe he’ll be spending a long, long time trying to make up for that. He’s positive that Colleen isn’t as okay with it as she’d been trying to say -  _ who would be? _ \- which is why her offer to let him live at the apartment had been contrary to everything he had expected. She’d said she wasn’t mad at him for it anymore - and he believes that - but that doesn’t mean she’s  _ okay _ with it. 

_ Maybe this will help us fix things _ . 

_ Or maybe this will make it worse _ . 

_ No -  _ he can’t think like that. He tightens his hands and takes a deep breath, pushes back at the anxiety because that’s not going to help, that’s never helped. Instead he turns his attention back to the door that he’s been staring at for a couple of minutes while people pushed past him, because he hadn’t been quite ready to go in yet. He’s still not, but at least now he’s fairly certain he’s going to accept her offer.  _ If it doesn’t work I can always find somewhere else _ , he reminds himself.

He takes his gloves off after he steps inside, intentionally walking up the stairs slowly to get to her apartment. He knocks when he reaches the door, still a little unsure, but he doesn’t have any more time to think before she opens the door and steps back to let him in. 

“Hey,” he greets as he steps past her into the always-welcoming apartment, much more at ease as soon as he’s inside. It’s always had this affect on him - from the moment he came the first time when he was still homeless, when this place was still a dojo. That had never changed, but it’s even more welcoming now since it’s the place they’d worked on  _ together _ , pieces of them both caught up in it. He loves it here. 

“You got back just in time, looks like the weather is about to take a turn for the worse,” Colleen comments as she heads back over to the kitchen, where she’d apparently been working on dinner. 

“Don’t remind me,” he replies with a slight laugh as he follows her into the kitchen. “I’ve had enough rain and snow today to last a while. Anything I can help with?”

“What? Oh, no, the soup is done.” she pauses. “And should be edible.” 

“I’m sure it’s fine,” he laughs. Colleen had never been the best cook. “It’s hard to mess up soup.” 

He sits down on one of the stools at the counter, setting his gloves down and removing his coat, letting the warmth of the apartment hit in him, which is welcome after a day of being out in the cold or trying to warm up from the rattling, not-quite-functioning heater in the truck. Colleen has her back to him while she stirs the soup and checks something on her phone, but for once the silence isn’t uncomfortable or tense, which he’s relieved about. He hates that wall between them. 

He waits until she sets her phone down before he speaks up. 

“I’ve been thinking about your offer,” he starts, and she doesn’t turn to look at him but he sees her tense up just slightly, and he knows she’s listening. “If it  _ really _ isn’t going to be a problem, then yeah, I’d appreciate being able to stay here. At least until I can find somewhere else.” 

“No, it’s  _ really _ not a problem,” she replies as she turns around to face him, and he thinks he sees the slightest flash of amusement in her eyes before it’s quickly gone. “Again, you’re not even going to be here the majority of the day, it’s not an issue. Just bring your stuff over from the hotel tomorrow, the rest is still in one of the drawers here.” 

_ Right _ . Of course it would all still be here. He’d thought, maybe, that since it had been a year she might have at least moved it, but like everything else, apparently that was left untouched too. He tries to ignore the uncomfortable sad twist in his chest at that. 

“Which, with the weather as it is, you might as well just stay here tonight,” she adds. 

“Thank you,” he says, and she just looks down, fidgets with the hem of her shirt before turning back around to focus on the soup again. He wishes she could understand  _ just _ how thankful he is for all of this, everything she’s been doing. He knows that this whole situation is, at the very least, uncomfortable for her. And as much as he wishes he could hug her, touch her, he knows that she doesn't want that right now.  _ Boundaries _ will have to be carefully respected. 

While Colleen grabs a couple of bowls, he moves his gloves and coat over to the other table, where she’d moved over all the notebooks and pages from this morning. He almost starts to move some of the papers and things off of the rest of the island counter, only to realize quickly that it’s something Colleen’s working on and leaves it after shifting it just a little further to the side. 

“Well, if you’re already staying for the night, we could probably get a little more work done on everything you brought,” Colleen says as she hands him a bowl of soup, moving her laptop out of the way to sit down next to him. “After I finish up with this.”

She turns her attention back to the laptop and the papers, and he can’t help but watch her for a moment,  _ trying _ not to think too much about the fact that she’s letting him stay. He quickly finds himself distracted completely by her; the lines of her face lit by the soft light of the apartment, the way she scrunches her nose a little as she reads over the paper, the strands of hair that have come loose from her bun that she keeps pushing back without really thinking about it.  _ God, she’s beautiful _ , he thinks, before noting that he should really  _ not _ be thinking about that too much. It’s a useless attempt though, because she  _ is _ cute. 

_ Stop. Now.  _

“Sounds like a plan.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i mean what did you expect


	5. Chapter 5

Living in the same space as Danny after a year apart is more strange than she expected. The apartment had been too quiet with him gone, an uncomfortable sort of silence that was rarely broken. It was too big of a space for just her, and he had reminded her of how lonely it had been before him. A crucial part of  _ home _ was missing, reminders of him throughout the entire apartment, and having him back is different now than she thought it would be. 

Where before they were partners, existing in the same space and working together easily with a certain level of comfort she’d never had with anyone before him. Now they’re existing in the same place more out of sync, with more uncomfortable silences. He’s been here for a few days now and he’s been giving her plenty of space, considerate as always (that hadn’t changed), and had been helpful with everything that he could help with. 

So it’s closer to normal than having him gone, with the main exception being that he’d very careful not to touch her. Which she  _ appreciates _ . Aside from a couple of hugs when he’d first gotten back, he’s respected her personal space honesty far better than she expected him too. Danny is very tactile by nature - something that had taken her a long time to get used to - and he normally doesn’t even think about it before grabbing her hand or any kind of small touches that she doesn’t think he actually realizes he’s doing. The fact that he’s clearly putting in a conscious effort to be careful about that around her makes her relax a lot more about having him back, gives her a warm feeling in her chest that she refuses to linger on for too long.

It’s an adjustment period, but if she’s being honest, it’s going better than expected. 

Now it’s  _ early _ , and it takes her several more minutes of laying in bed before she works up the motivation to get up. She thinks it was Danny getting ready to leave that morning that had partly woken her up, though she hadn’t seen him, and she’d just halfway drifted back off to sleep again until her alarm went off. It’s cold and raining outside, which is honestly  _ worse _ than the snow, because everything is miserable and wet and she’s not looking forward to her walk to the center this morning. 

Reluctantly, she gets up and grabs the nearest jacket and tugs it on, going through the quick motions of brushing her teeth and washing her face before she heads out into the kitchen. It had been mostly quiet all morning, so she figures Danny had left again before she’d fully woken up, which isn’t anything out of the ordinary. 

There’s a couple of lights on in the main room, but that’s not what catches her attention. On the island is one of the travel mugs with a bright green sticky note pressed onto the counter next to it. The note is clearly in Danny’s handwriting, and when she grabs the mug, it’s warm to the touch. 

 

_ Left early. I was already making tea so I went _

_ ahead and made yours as well. See you tonight. _

 

_ p.s. I didn’t know when you’d be up and I _

_ wanted it to stay warm so that’s why it’s in this cup :) _   
  


The note makes her smile because it’s such a  _ Danny _ thing - especially the little smiley face - that she can’t ignore the warm feeling in her chest as the gesture.  _ Of course he’d just  _ do _ this, _ she thinks, because that’s just how he is, has always been. It had been the routine half of the time before, him making tea for both of them before he left in the morning for work. The fact that he still decided to do this  _ now _ is the kind sort of gesture from him that’s almost too normal, given the circumstances. 

She picks up the note, considering for just a moment before folding it in half and tucking it into her pocket, reaching for the mug. Him leaving a note isn’t even that surprising - he’d done that before, sometimes - but the fact that he did now is almost a little uncomfortable. It makes her think a little too much about the warmth in her chest at the thought of him, the one she wants to ignore. 

_ Stop thinking about him and get ready to leave _ , she tells herself, shaking her head before walking back into the bedroom to change. She hesitates for a second before grabbing her phone from the side table and pulling up her texts to Danny.

 

  * __Thanks for the tea__



 

She only has to wait a few seconds before his reply comes in. 

 

  * __:)__



She can’t help but smile at that.    
  


\-----

Danny has only been back in the apartment for a few days when she notices it - how  _ tired _ he is. It takes her a couple of days to realize this, simply because she hasn’t seen him much in the mornings, and he’s always tired after work so it hadn’t been as obvious then. Now, though, it’s a Saturday and it’s getting later into the morning and he’s still not up. That is concerning in itself since he’s never been the type to sleep in on the weekends even if he’d been up early the rest of the week. It had always bothered her - she’d always been the one making him stay in bed longer on weekends since she is  _ not _ the early morning riser than he is, but the habit had never really passed onto him despite her best efforts. 

When she heads out into the main room the lights are all still off, though the room is still fairly bright with the light from the windows. Danny is still on the sofa with blankets piled over him, tugged halfway up over his head. He looks a bit pitiful, and at a quick glance she can’t actually tell if he’s asleep or not. The fact that he hadn’t stirred when she’d slid the door open seems like a good tell that he  _ isn’t _ . 

As quietly as possible she pads into the kitchen and grabs a cup, and even though the barely turns the faucet on to keep it quiet, the sound of the water hitting the sink is enough for him to stir. She hears him mumble something unintelligible into the pillow before moving the blankets away from his face, shifting onto his back and looking over at her. 

“Morning,” she says as she flips a small light on, looking at him a little suspiciously. He looks  _ exhausted _ in the admittedly dim lighting as he rubs at his eyes. “You okay?”

He seems to pick up on the concern in her voice that she can’t quite hide, and he sits up with a slight groan and looks over at her even  _ more _ tiredly as he reaches to turn on a second light. “Yeah, I’m good.” 

_ As if _ . 

“No, you’re  _ not _ ,” Colleen argues as she shuts the water off. “I’m not blind.” Now that she can see him better, the dark circles under his eyes are very pronounced, and the general tired slump to his body is a pretty good indication as well. “Are you sleeping okay?” She asks, giving him a  _ look _ , which he responds to by pointedly breaking eye contact with her. 

He sighs, rubbing at his eyes again. “No,” he finally relents, his voice sounding rough from sleep, or lack thereof. 

“Any specific reason  _ why _ ?” 

He hesitates like he doesn’t want to tell her whatever the actual answer is, before he gives in. “It’s just a little hard to sleep out here. The sofa is a bit too small,” he says, laughing just a little. “Also, it’s cold as hell out here. We should’ve replaced the windows, like we talked about. I’ll get used to it though,” he adds quickly, looking away again as he pushes the blankets further to the side. All of those things make sense - he isn’t exactly a small person, and  _ yeah _ , they really should’ve replaced the windows when they were renovating. 

The moment the thought comes to her head, she knows she should ignore it.  _ Do not suggest what you’re thinking don’t do it _ . 

“How much sleep have you been getting?” She tries not to be as concerned about it as she is, but he’s always had a rough time when he’s not getting sleep, tends to be more anxious. She can’t help but worry about that now, it’s a  _ habit _ , she supposes. 

“Few hours a night at most, maybe?” he replies slowly as he stands up stiffly, slowly walking over to join her in the kitchen. 

_ do not suggest it do not _

“You’re working most days a week, you need to be sleeping more,” she starts, looking up at him hesitantly. “It might make more sense to just… share a bed again. We’re both adults here, it doesn’t have to be weird,” she points out, even though it’s perfectly clear to her that there is absolutely no way they can share a bed again without it being weird. After everything, that’s impossible.  _ Just don’t think about that _ . 

“You’ve already let me stay in the apartment again, which is honestly way more than I deserve, I don’t want to…  _ intrude _ anymore,” Danny says, completely serious.  _ Always a gentleman _ , she thinks, resisting the urge to smile because that doesn’t seem like the right response. 

“Okay, but  _ also _ , you need to be getting sleep. It really wouldn’t be a problem, Danny, and it’s probably the better option right now.  _ Besides _ ,” she says, giving him a slightly teasing smile. “I can always hit you with a pillow if you move too close.” 

_ That  _ gets a genuine laugh out of him, as she intended, and it’s a sound she’s missed more than she ever wants to admit. His whole face brightens up when he laughs, and she’s always loved that. 

He runs a hand through his hair, shaking his head a little. 

“And if it doesn’t work, the sofa will still be right there,” she adds. 

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees after a moment, still smiling a little. “At least until I find a different place.” 

She quickly drains her cup before filling it back up and passing it wordlessly over to Danny, who doesn’t hesitate to drink all of it. 

“Starting now,” she says when he finishes, reaching over and taking the cup back. “You look like you haven’t slept in days. It’s  _ not _ that late, it’s the weekend, go get some more sleep, okay? At least try to.” she gives him a slight push towards the bedroom as she steps past him to put the cup away. 

He leaves without another word of protest, which she figures is a testament to how tired he is. After putting water on to boil she grabs her computer from the table and moves it over to the counter, figuring that she might as well attempt to finish some work this morning so she doesn’t have to think about it later. Weekends with Danny here are  _ weird _ , because there isn’t really any avoiding him. Which sounds mean, she thinks, but she can only handle so much of him right now while things are still shaky and she’s grateful that he’d gone back to bed without any arguing. 

The problem being, she’s tired too. She doesn’t exactly sleep well by herself anymore, something she hadn’t really realized until after Danny had left. The bed had been too cold and empty. The thought of going back to bed is a tempting one - it  _ is _ a Saturday, it’s gray and gloomy and cold outside, so it’s not like there’s any reason not to.  _ Except Danny is in there and this is awkward _ , she thinks, rubbing at her eyes.  _ Did this to yourself _ , she notes, sighing. 

She expects the tea to help but instead it does the opposite, the warmth of it seeping into her and making her more sleepy as she leans against the counter and tries to focus. She makes it barely fifteen minutes before she caves, shutting the laptop with a loud  _ click _ and tentatively heading back to the bedroom and lingering in the doorway. Danny is laying down on the bed, on the side closest to the dresser - that had always been his side. His breaths are deep and even, eyes closed, and all of the tension in his body is gone, so he’s clearly asleep. 

Nothing makes sense anymore. Really, Colleen can’t remember the last time her life fully  _ did _ make sense. It almost had, before, when they’d lived together and she sort of had a job, and Danny had his new job, and for once they weren’t tracking a cult around the world and dealing with that, and there hadn’t been any immediate threats. Things had been as close to normal as they’d ever been for her. 

But  _ this _ doesn’t make sense. The twisting knot of  _ something _ in her chest that’s getting harder to ignore, or the fact that Danny is  _ here _ but somehow further away than ever at the same time. Things had almost made more sense while he’d been gone - she had to be here, and Danny had to be away. That’s what she’d managed to convince herself of,  _ that’s _ what had made sense to her. But now that he’s back, everything feels like it’s been shaken up, and everything she’s convinced herself of is falling apart piece by fragile piece. 

She’d missed him. That had made sense. 

The fact that somehow it feels like she misses him even more while he’s right here in front of her  _ doesn’t _ . 

_ Why is nothing ever easy? _

Sighing, she looks over at Danny again and watches him for a moment to be extra sure that he’s already asleep before she finally steps into the room and quietly makes her way around to the side of the bed. He’s laying more towards the middle than anything, but there’s just enough room for her to carefully lay down near the edge without touching him at all. The bed is small, really only meant for one person, but that had never really been an issue when they were together. They’d always ended up pressed together regardless of the size, hence never deciding to replace it. Now, with hindsight, she kind of wishes they had. 

She tugs the blankets up around her carefully without disturbing Danny, trying not to focus on the fact that she’s completely aware of him just behind her, can feel the warmth of his body. Which is  _ nice _ , she figures, since it’s cold, as long as he doesn’t wake up. Because this is  _ awkward _ and strange and for a moment she wonders why in the hell she’d suggested it in the first place.  

Instead of focusing on that she tries to focus on the good, like the fact that it’s way warmer under these blankets than out in the other room, which makes this mostly worth it. After adjusting her pillow she curls up a little tighter, and eventually, she finally starts to drift off to sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What Did You Expect™
> 
> there was no avoiding this in this fic we embrace the cliche


	6. Chapter 6

It’s a Monday evening when Danny comes back into the apartment later than usual and almost  _ bouncing _ with energy, clearly in a good mood. Colleen is sorting through papers at the kitchen counter when he comes out, reaching out for her before she instinctively takes a step back to dodge. She’s pretty sure he hadn’t really been thinking about the action - it’s normal when he’s excited - so she just gives him a tired sort of smile as he sets his phone and keys down on the counter.

“What’s going on?” she asks, because  _ clearly _ something is, because usually he’s tired after work and something has him in good spirits. 

“So, I found a gym,” he explains. “I kind of stumbled across it, it’s not that far from here. They’ve got an open mat area that’s up for use if you become a member there. It’ll be a good place to train, I think. I haven’t had a chance to since I got back.”

_ That _ makes sense. He’s always been the sort to get fidgety when he doesn’t have space to train, to fight, and she could tell over the past couple of weeks that he’d been getting more and more of that restless energy. Eventually, it would’ve spilled over, and she’s glad that he’s found somewhere to channel that. 

“That’s great, it’ll be good for you.” 

“Uh, so… I was kind of thinking you could come with me, sometimes? Only if you want to, of course,” he says slowly, almost warily. “You don’t  _ have _ to, I just thinking that it might be good for you, too?” 

_ breathe _

“Danny, I don’t know.” she hesitates. “I stopped for a reason.” 

“I know that, and I  _ do _ understand your reasons. But, I mean… this doesn’t mean you have to  _ fight _ again, or push yourself, or anything like that. Maybe just basics? I know you aren’t wanting to fight anymore but doing some of it just as more of a workout wouldn’t be a bad idea, maybe. You don’t have to completely give it up.”

_ He makes a valid point _ , she thinks, not quite making eye contact with him. Martial arts, her training, had been such a large part of her life for as long as she can remember, and leaving it all behind like she’s been trying to do has been both freeing and  _ wrong _ . And now she’s got that same restless sort of energy that she knows Danny feels stirring in her chest, too, she’s just been trying to channel it into other things with only moderate success. But she knows she’s been falling out of practice and out of shape, which she doesn’t like, and maybe looking at it as less of a  _ fighting _ thing and more of a workout would make it easier. The idea of going back into it all still feels mildly suffocating. 

_ But it wouldn’t be  _ here _ , and maybe that would make it okay _ . Maybe if it wasn’t here in the dojo-turned-apartment, where the good and bad memories of fighting and training, of Danny and her students, were so painfully tainted, it would make it easier. 

“Anyway, I was planning to go back over there now, before it gets too late. To sign up at least and get a better look at the place. You can come with me, if you want, just to think about it?” he says, and she finally looks up at him again, and he’s got a hesitant but hopeful look on his face that immediately makes it hard to say  _ no _ , especially when it’s a completely fair offer with no real pressure in it. The fact that she  _ could _ say no and he wouldn’t push it makes it easier to say  _ yes _ . 

“Okay, I’ll come and  _ think about it _ . This isn’t a yes to training again.” she agrees after a moment, because as weird as it makes her feel at the thought of getting into it all again, she can’t deny the part of her that misses it more than she cares to admit. Not all that long ago, she’d  _ loved  _ it, fought in cages just to test and push her limits and  _ enjoyed  _ it. Sometimes, she wonders what happened to  _ that _ Colleen - the one who had never backed down from something like this, had  _ thrived _ on it. She tries not to think about that too much, but it’s moments like now that make her wonder why everything had gone so badly that she’d lost that part of herself. 

“Great!” he’s smiling now, clearly more excited about this than she is.  

She offers a half hearted smile in return before stepping past him to at least find something that’s not jeans to change into before leaving. He’s quick to change as well, still clearly bouncing with energy as he grabs his coat and wallet before heading out of the door with her trailing behind him, still unsure about the whole situation. 

“It’s dark and cold, why are we going  _ now _ ?” she asks as she steps past him out onto the sidewalk and is immediately hit with a rush of cold air that makes her shiver despite her jacket, and she wraps her arms tighter around herself as if that’ll help. 

“It’s only six, it’s not  _ that _ late,” he counters, even though it’s already completely dark out. “And it’s not that far from here.” 

She can’t really argue with that, so she falls silent and walks next to Danny, not really paying too much attention. The walk gives her time to think about it, about the pros and cons of it all, but by the time they reach the gym she’s as undecided as she was when they left the apartment. 

She trails after Danny as he enters, holding the door open for her, before he heads up to the desk without any sort of hesitation. She hangs back near the door while he fills out the application, taking the time to quickly look around. It’s a fairly small place so there’s not all that much to see, a little family owned and operated place that has a more inviting feel than a normal gym. There’s plenty of standard gym equipment off to the right in a large room, a couple of doors leading into something else in front of her, and to the left she can see the open mat area that Danny had been talking about. It looks like some sort of normal martial arts class is probably held there, going by some of the equipment and the belts hanging off at one corner on the wall, but she doesn’t see anything that indicates which style. It is, however, pretty much the opposite of what her dojo had been - where her’s had been more dull colors and weapons against or hanging on the walls, this room has brightly colored mats and bare walls, with very little to give it any actual character. Where her’s had always had more of a traditional feel to it, this place seems as modern as they come. 

“It’s not a big place, but there’s only classes held there in the mornings and early afternoon, so it’s free for anyone to use in the evening,” Danny says, and she looks over at him as he walks back over to stand next to her, tucking a new card into his wallet. “Also with this membership I can get you in as well, so…”

“I still haven’t agreed yet.”

“I know. I’m planning to stay for a little while, but you don’t have to,” he says, smiling a little. She appreciates that he’s not being pushy about it, because if he had she’d have left immediately. They’d been there before, and she never wants that again. But even if their last times training together had been far less than ideal, she remembers when she’d first met him, and how much she’d enjoyed it  _ then _ . The thrill of working with someone that was actually a challenge to her, who would always give her encouragement and advice even if they were sparring each other. It had been  _ good _ then. 

“Well, I’m already here, at least some stretching wouldn’t hurt. I haven’t exactly kept of with it,” she decides after a pause, trying not to think about how much it’s likely going to hurt after so long  _ not _ doing it. 

“It’ll be good.” He’s smiling again, and is clearly still the more enthusiastic of the two. 

Colleen follows him into the open room, immediately removing her shoes and socks before stepping out onto the mats out of habit, noting with a slight smile that Danny had some the same without hesitation. There’s a set of cubbies against the wall for shoes, so she figures it’s fine. Regardless of whether or not it’s the most formal dojo, if the room could even be considered a dojo, the action is still ingrained into her from years spent training in a variety of places. The mats under her feet are the same as what she’d had in her dojo, but instead of a gray they’re an obnoxious bright red. 

She stays off to one side while she starts running through a basic sequence of stretches, quickly starting to regret not keeping up with anything as the movements pull uncomfortably in a way they hadn’t before. It feels a lot better than she wants to admit, the familiar movements and the sense of calm it’s always brought her. On the other side of the mats, Danny is going through a simple kata that she’s seen him do frequently, his eyes closed and completely focused. 

After a moment of hesitation she starts into one of her own, quickly finding that her body remembers the movements better than her mind, and that it’s much easier to not think about it as she runs through one of the mid-belt-level katas she’d taught before. When she finishes after only a couple of minor and easily corrected mistakes, she notices that Danny is watching her and tries not to feel a little weird about that. 

“Do you miss it? Teaching, or anything?” he asks. 

It’s not really the question she’d been expected, but knowing Danny, maybe it should’ve been. It’s not a question she’s liked to ask herself or dwell on for any amount of time simply because she doesn’t like the conclusion she always comes to. 

“Yes.” The truth in its most simple form. “Maybe not  _ teaching _ , specifically, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do that again.” 

“Do you miss fighting? Not… fighting to hurt people, or survive, just  _ fun _ fighting. Sparring.” He takes a step closer and seems genuinely curious. 

“I shouldn’t miss any of it. I stopped for a reason. But, yeah… I guess I do miss it more than I want to.” There’s no point lying to him about it, because he always  _ knows _ , maybe even before she told him. 

“It’s a part of you. You shouldn’t feel bad about missing that. Have you done anything like this while I was… gone?” he trails off a little awkwardly, briefly looking down before he meets her eyes again. 

“No. The last time I fought anyone was Davos. I haven’t kept up with anything.” It almost seems silly now as she says it out loud, to have so fully given it up.  _ Maybe Danny is right about this _ , she thinks, not feeling quite as wary of it as she had not even an hour ago. 

“Spar?” he asks suddenly, taking a couple of steps back and giving her an encouraging look. For a moment she hesitates, trying to ignore the anxiety that creeps up on her at the thought of it and instead focuses entirely on the part of her that wants to accept his offer. Slowly, she steps up towards the center of the mats across from him, nodding. He can’t seem to stop his excited smile and that bright eagerness that lights up his face. He’s always loved sparring with her. 

She takes her place directly across from him, pointedly ignoring that nervous  _ twist _ in her stomach as they bow to each other before starting. 

For a while when they’d been training together frequently and sparring often, it had almost felt more like a dance than a fight. Over time, she’d learned to read him quickly and anticipate his moves, to the point where it had been getting harder and harder for either of them to really  _ win _ a fight because they always knew what the other was going to do. To an outsider, it would’ve seemed choreographed. To know someone this way had always been unique to her, a connection that not many people have. While he had always been the better fighter of the two and usually one, since he had more experience overall, she’d been quickly catching up to him in skill. 

But now, it’s almost sad how much harder it is for her for keep up with him. He’s fast and efficient and even though she  _ knows _ how this goes, and knows what he’s going to do, the reality is that she is sorely out of practice. It doesn’t matter how much she  _ knows _ if her body is struggling to keep up, and for the first time she really  _ feels _ the effects of her lack of training in the form of strikes she can’t block or dodge fast enough and the sharper ache in her lungs. He’s pulling his punches though, which she notices quickly and is almost annoyed by but doesn’t say anything. 

She makes it another thirty seconds or so before it starts to get uncomfortable, because she manages to land a blow that makes him gasp out a break and lurch backwards, before that nervous twist becomes sharper and unbearable and she backs off, holding her hands up and signalling to stop. She takes a moment, more out of breath than she cares to admit. 

“For not fighting since the beginning of the year, that was good!” Danny says, always the encouraging one, and she can’t decide if it’s comforting or irritating or somehow both.

“I’m so out of it,” she counters, because really, that was not good. 

She’s uncomfortably hot now in the overheated room, so she tugs at the zipper on her jacket before taking it off, brushing back that hair that’s escaped her braid while she continues to take steadying breaths. She tries to keep ignoring that sickening twist in her stomach, frowning a little as she moves to set her jacket down near her shoes. 

When she turns around she notices that Danny is watching her, and that’s the moment she realizes that she’s not wearing long sleeves. His attention is clearly focused on the tattoo trailing up her arm, intent and a little curious, almost. Immediately she wishes she could put her jacket back on without it being weird, or that she’d remember to wear long sleeves, or that there was  _ something _ that she could do to quickly hide it besides awkwardly shifting her arm to have it behind her and out of his view. 

It’s not like he hasn’t seen the tattoo before; he was there when she got it. But she’s spent the past year trying to keep it covered and hidden from anyone to the point where it’s become second nature to cover or hide it. She just didn’t want the  _ questions  _ about it. The inevitable ones wondering  _ why _ , prying, wanting to know things she didn’t exactly want to tell anyway. Misty is the only one who knows about it besides Danny. It had worked out, more or less, and keeping it covered meant that she didn’t have to focus on the weird and anxious feeling she always had when it  _ wasn’t _ . 

With Danny though, it’s different. The tattoo is essentially a  _ part _ of him, a piece of him permanently inked onto her skin and forever a symbol of the fact that she now carries the iron fist. It’s weird and uncomfortable and something that she’d pointedly refused to talk about with him yet, and she feels exposed in a way that’s not at all comfortable and it makes the room feel a bit suffocating, like it’s pressing down onto her. 

Her mouth feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton as she tries to figure out what to say, if anything, or if she should just leave without any sort of explanation before the suffocating feeling gets worse. He wants to say something, she  _ knows _ that look all too well, knows that this is going to go a direction that she’s not ready for if she doesn’t leave. 

“I’m… I’m going to go,” she rushes out, and she’s not really sure if the words came out making sense or mixed together, all she can focus on is quickly trying to get her shoes and socks back on before grabbing her jacket. 

“Oh, I’ll come with you, we’ve been here long enough-”

“No, you’re fine, you can stay,” she interrupts, hoping that he gets the point that she  _ doesn’t _ want him to come with her right now. She tugs the jacket on, relieved, as she quickly heads for the door without waiting for an answer from him. 

The strangling sort of self conscious feeling isn’t something that’s foreign to her. It wasn’t quite right, but since she’d gotten the tattoo  _ and _ the fist, she’d done everything she could to hide it from the world or not think about it. Despite her attempts, it hadn’t prevented the uneasy feeling she always has regarding it whenever someone else could see it, too. She’s not a stranger to this feeling, but it hadn't ever been like  _ this _ before. Before it had always been about her training, her performance, always a lingering uncomfortable feeling in the back of her head and in her stomach about whether or not she’d ever live up to the high standard Bakuto had placed on her from the start. But  _ that _ was a very different sort of thing, one that she’d learned to deal with, but  _ this _ she’s not quite sure how to handle. 

_ You’re going to have to talk about this eventually,  _ she thinks, frowning as she heads back to the apartment, hardly even noticing the cold this time. The conversation is inevitable, she  _ knows _ this, but tonight is not a good night for it. She’s not sure if Danny is following her or not, and she doesn’t look back. 

When she gets back to the apartment she tries not to think about how quickly she left, because she realizes that  _ maybe _ that wasn’t the best thing she could’ve done, though it’s hard to regret it. She just hopes that it hadn’t hurt him at all, though figures that’s too much to ask. She sighs and stands in the main room for several minutes to see if Danny gets back, only to decide that even if he had left already, it hadn’t been immediately after her.  _ That’s good _ , she thinks, letting the calm quiet of the apartment settle in, making everything feel a little less  _ off _ than before. 

Inevitably, he’s going to come home and it’s going to be awkward, but she tries not to linger on that thought too much. Instead she takes her shoes off and walks into the bedroom, grabbing a change of clothes before heading into the bathroom to take a shower. It seems like a good distraction, and the warm water is nice after the cold walk back to the apartment that she’d hardly felt until it was over. 

When she gets out and dries off, she quickly checks her phone and finds one text from Danny. 

 

  * __Bringing food back. Home soon__



The text is from nearly ten minutes ago so he’ll likely be back any time. She dresses quickly, with long sleeves this time, before brushing out her hair and twisting it up into a bun to keep it out of the way. She hears the door to the apartment open and shut, and takes a slow breath before leaving the bathroom and joining Danny in the kitchen. 

He’s set a bag of food down on the counter, though she doesn’t really pay much attention to what it is. He looks over at she enters, pausing briefly what he’s doing before he looks away again and continues. 

“You okay?” he asks, voice soft and concerned. 

“Yeah. Fine. Sorry I left like that.” She can’t decide if she actually feels guilty for that or not, though either way she knows she probably shouldn’t have run off. Thankfully he doesn’t seemed annoyed or hurt, just worried, but that overall enthusiastic energy from earlier seems long gone. 

“Is this about-” he begins, and she watches as he lifts up his right hand and knows  _ exactly _ where he’s going with this, exactly what she isn’t ready for him to start, so she cuts him off abruptly. 

“It doesn’t matter. We’re not… we’re not having this conversation right now, okay?” she hates the way she stumbles over the words as she says them, hates the way that Danny just nods and looks away quickly.

She can’t tell if he seems frustrated with this, but the sudden silence is uncomfortable and she’s not really sure what to do with herself. She takes the plate he hands her wordlessly, hardly paying attention, before she moves to grab her computer and headphones and retreats over to the sofa. Ignoring the issue is not the best idea, she  _ knows _ this, but it also doesn’t seem like the best conversation to have right now. 

Instead she tries to work for the next couple of hours as a distraction, and does make some good progress, but either way the appearance of her working with headphones in seems to be enough to prevent him from trying to talk to her. There’s better ways to handle this, she’s sure of that, but she doesn’t want to yet - maybe when the anxiety about it all eases up a little, or in the morning when they’d had some sleep. It’ll happen eventually, she can’t avoid it forever, but tonight she can.   
  
She says out on the sofa ‘working’ until it’s fairly late, late enough that she figures Danny is _probably_ asleep because he’s had the lights off in the bedroom for a while. The apartment is dark and silent, and there’s no indication that he is still awake, but she still waits a little bit longer before finally joining him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me @ them please just hug


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah i almost forgot this today

It  _ hurts _ . 

That’s all that she’s really aware of as she wakes up abruptly - the way her heart is pounding through her body and how her stomach twists and how every slight breath she tries to take creates a tight pressure in her chest and  _ why- _

Colleen pushes the blankets away because they feel suffocating, but the normally simple action is a struggle ruined by the way her hands are shaking. The blankets are tangled around her legs and for a moment her chest feels tighter as she struggles with that, with  _ breathing _ , before she finally gets them pushed away. She moves to sit up, putting her feet onto the cold floor and leaning forward, trying to see if there’s a position that eases her breathing even though she knows it’s a useless attempt, she  _ can’t _ and everything is fuzzy as she clenches her hands around the blankets at her sides and wishes the pain would ease. 

_ Danny _ . In the panic she’d forgotten that he was in the bed next to her, but he’s not moving and she thinks that he hasn’t noticed yet. But now her breaths are too loud in the quiet room, borderline hyperventilating, and it feels like her chest is going to collapse inwards and crush her. It  _ hurts _ . Her fingers are a little numb and there’s tears running down her face now as she clamps a hand over her mouth to muffle the choked sob that she can’t hold back. 

She hates the panic. She hates it more when it’s like  _ this _ , sudden and pulling her out of sleep, where everything is hazy and out of touch and  _ wrong _ . 

She presses her other hand over her mouth too as if the action will somehow make everything stop, shutting her eyes tightly as she tries to push away the panic and relax her body, but she’s too tense. The past couple of weeks have been a  _ lot _ , with last night being a final  _ push _ , and sometimes everything just catches up to her all at once. Like now, where the world feels like it’s spinning too fast and she’s got no control and it’s the middle of the damn night and she just wants this part  _ over with _ . 

_ Breathe _

She leans forward more until her head is nearly touching her knees, fighting back the sick feeling that twists up unforgivingly in her stomach. She tightens her hand when another sound escapes her because  _ no _ , she has to be quiet but she’s too unsteady to stand up and leave the room, but she has to be quiet or Danny will take up and he doesn’t need to know, she doesn’t  _ want _ him to know-

“Colleen?” his voice is rough with sleepy, hesitant, but there’s a worried note to it as she feels the bed move. She doesn’t look back at him, just presses her hands tighter against her mouth even though it doesn’t help, and she tries not to move and fights to keep the next sob back because she  _ hates this _ .

“Colleen, what’s wrong?” Danny tries again, and she can hear him moving the blankets away and getting up, and in a moment he’s turned on a small lamp and he’s circled around the bed to crouch in front of her, and all she can do it look at him with teary eyes and curse herself for not keeping it together. 

“What can I do?” he asks gently, reaching out to her only to stop and pull back, looking like he wants to help but doesn’t know if that’s okay. He looks  _ worried _ .

She takes in as much of a shaky breath as she can and forces herself to slowly move her hands away. “I’m okay.” It’s a lie, the most obvious one and they both know it. But she doesn’t have the words to explain how it feels like her chest is being crushed and her head is spinning and hurting and there’s not any air left in her aching lungs. She doesn’t know how to explain what set it off because she has no reasoning for it - usually there isn’t - just a creeping and overwhelming sensation of  _ wrong _ . All she’s aware of is the  _ panic _ and the  _ hurt _ , all tangled together in a way that makes her feel like she’s going to throw up. 

_ Before _ , she wouldn’t have hesitated for even a second to let him comfort her. She would’ve moved right into his arms and let him keep her steady until she was okay again. He’s stayed with her through many panic attacks, but this is  _ different _ . Because now he’s reaching forward and his hands are on her arms, sliding up to her shoulders gently, and he’s moving to sit on the bed next to her and pulling her body towards him as if it’s the most natural thing in the world (maybe it is to him, still) but that’s  _ not good _ . Instinctively she pushes away, stumbling up to her feet in a sudden movement that makes her head spin as she fights back the rush of dizziness, trying to breathe and trying to ignore the way he jerks back like he’s been hurt as she pushes him away. 

She’s getting a little lightheaded as she pushes past him to leave the bedroom. She can hear him following her immediately despite what she’d done, and she makes it as far as the sofa before she ends up sinking to the floor with her back pressed up against it, deciding against moving anymore. Drawing her legs up to her chest, she leans her head down against her knees with her hands up by her face again, wishing the trembling would stop and that she could breathe again.

“Let me help, please?” Danny asks, sounding like he’s in the room but not very close. She doesn’t want him to help, doesn’t want him in the room, and just wishes that he’d leave her alone to ride it out by herself. Part of her still wants to let him help, but she  _ can’t allow  _ that. Because that’s not something she can let happen anymore, almost too intimate of a gesture that the idea of it makes her uneasy.  _ I can’t do this again _ , she thinks, pulling her legs up closer and forcing in a shaky breath. 

“Go,” she tells him, then, because that’s about as much as she can get out. When there’s no reply she looks up at him just in time to see the worried, hurt expression on his face and the sadness in his eyes, and it’s bit heartbreaking. But then he’s retreating back into the bedroom without another word, sliding the door shut softly, and she thinks that she should start to relax now or calm down. Instead it just hurts worse. 

_ Breathe _ , she thinks, the only real continuous thought in her head that she can focus on. She forces herself to move her hands to rest against the floor at her sides, breathing on a four count, making herself breathe slower and to stop the crying. It mostly works, and minute by minute, the panic slowly bleeds away until she’s just tired and  _ cold _ . Cold and a little shaky and sweaty, but the feeling is coming back to her face and hands, though her entire body feels  _ weak _ . There’s still an aching in her chest and her head is still throbbing, but it’s not as overwhelming anymore. 

Slowly, she lifts her head up and stretches her lets out a little, the worst of the tension still easing. The more she moves, the more she discovers that her entire body hurts. Sometimes she’s not sure what’s worse - the actual panic, or the way she doesn’t feel quite  _ real _ afterwords, a little bit detached and not entire there. It’s an uncomfortable sort of feeling, and never one she’s really figured out how to deal with. 

Shakily she lifts one hand to rub at her eyes, looking back over at the closed door to the bedroom. It’s too quiet in the apartment with just the faint sounds of the city to fill it, and it’s mostly dark though she notices that the light is still on in the bedroom. She knows she’s not going to get back to sleep, and that she’s definitely not going back into the bedroom, but standing up doesn’t seem like the best idea yet so she just shifts a little into a more comfortable position that really doesn’t help much. Everything is  _ off _ now, and she’s aware of how much her body hurts even though that doesn’t feel entirely right, either. 

She fights, pulling her legs back up to rest her head against her knees again.  _ It’ll be better tomorrow _ , she tell herself. She hopes that maybe, if she thinks it enough, that it won’t be a lie. 

\-----

In the morning she still feels  _ wrong _ , empty, like not everything has quite pieced itself back together again in her head, and all of that combined with the lack of sleep is making her feel almost sick. At some point she’d moved up onto the sofa, curled up on her side, because the last thing that she’d wanted was to go back into the bedroom. She’s thankful that Danny had left her alone because really, she wasn’t -  _ isn’t _ \- ready to face him yet. The last thing she wants to think about is how awkward all of this will be this morning. 

She hears when he gets up, though he doesn’t come out immediately, so she just shifts so that she’s facing the back of the sofa instead of the door. She doesn’t move much while she waits for him to come out, knowing that it’s inevitable, even though if she could she’d push that moment back as long as she could. 

When the door slides open she resists the urge to look over at him, because she isn’t really sure what to say to him yet. What  _ can _ be said. The whole situation is awkward, probably the worst one since he’d come back, and she’s torn between silence on the matter or trying to explain, though neither seems like the right option. She just wishes that they could pretend that it hadn’t even happened, and move forwards, but he’s never been that sort of person.  _ You worried him _ , she reminds herself, because she’s not stupid. It’s still painfully obvious how much he cares about her - it’s overwhelming sometimes - and he’s going to want to at least address it. 

She keeps her eyes tightly shut, even though he’ll know she’s not asleep. She doesn’t hear him when he approaches, instead she feels the weight of a blanket settling over her indicating that he’s there. When she opens her eyes and shifts onto her back, he’s standing there next to the sofa giving her a tired, still-worried sort of look. 

“It’s cold out here,” he says, which explains the blanket. “Are you okay?”

_ Yes  _ would be a lie.  _ No  _ isn’t entirely correct. 

“Better.” 

He seems mostly satisfied with her answer, though his worried look never leaves, which she tries not to feel guilty about. He  _ knows _ that this happens sometimes, and has always been the one to tell her as often as she’ll listen that she shouldn’t feel bad about it. He has his own problems, too, and has always pointed out that the logic goes both ways. It helps, most days. 

“Okay,” he looks at her like he wants to say more. She hopes that he doesn’t. Maybe later, she’ll be able to talk, but right now she’s not sure if she can handle that. 

“Just take it easy today,” he adds after a moment of hesitation. She’s not sure what time it is, but going by the fact that Danny is already dressed to leave for work, probably later than she thinks. 

Some days, she wishes that they could just go back to  _ before _ . When things were easier, when they were  _ okay _ , when most of their conversations or attempts to talk hadn’t felt strained or awkward.  _ Before _ Davos had come back, before everything had gone wrong, when they’d had their difficult moments but they were still  _ happy _ . Right now, she wishes for that more than ever, wishes that she had the words to fix this because she knows that this sucks for both of them.  _ But this is now _ , she reminds herself, over and over as she watches him walk away and head into the kitchen without another word. Rolling back over onto her side, she pulls the blanket up over her shoulders more, having not really realized how cold she was until he’d given her the blanket. 

_ Now is now and you can’t change what happened _ , she tells herself, over and over. It doesn’t change the fact that she wishes she could. 

\-----

Danny is distracted all day. Even Albert comments on it several times, pointing out to him that he’s slower at his work than usual today and is hardly his normal level of energetic. Though, really, it’s hard to  _ not _ be distracted when he thinks about Colleen. When he thinks about how she’d been when he’d left that morning, about the events of the past twenty four hours, all he can focus on is that steadily building anxious pressure in his chest.

_ Maybe _ he shouldn’t really be this worried about it. That’s a completely realistic and solid possibility; he does tend to over-worry about things despite his best attempts. After having been with Colleen for a couple of years, he’s familiar with the way she functions, the way she reacts to things. After her abrupt exit at the gym last night he’d been concerned, of course, though had pretty quickly figured out what the actual problem was. The  _ iron fist _ . He knows it’s been bothering her - she’d nearly refused to mention it at all while he’d been away, and she won’t now even in passing - but he hadn’t realized it was to this degree. The fact that her apparent frustration doesn’t actually seem to be directed  _ at _ him really just makes him more worried - if she were angry with him, he knows how to deal with that, how to help. But in this case, part of him just thinks he made everything worse. 

She hadn’t wanted to talk when he’d gotten home last night, and that’s  _ fine _ , but as it had gotten late he’d tried waiting up for her. He’d been hoping she’d come to bed and get some sleep, but the minutes and the hours had ticked past quietly and she still hadn’t come, and he didn’t want to push it. Eventually it was just too late and  _ he _ needed to sleep, so he’d reluctantly given up on waiting for her. 

Really, he could handle her being frustrated. He figured that after a few days they probably would’ve been able to talk about the issue, and moved on. The panic attack, however, just made everything harder. There had been countless nights before when he’d stayed up with her during and after then, holding her through it or just sitting with her, whatever she’d decided that she’d needed. It had been bad around the time she’d just gotten free from the Hand, and it had been even worse right after Midland Circle. What had never wavered was the fact that she’d always let him help however he could, always let him stay by her side. Until last night. And that had worried him the  _ most _ . 

What had been motivating him all day was the fact that once he got home they’d be able to talk, and hopefully make things  _ okay _ . It’s still the thought he’s trying to focus on as he gets back to the building, up the stairs to the apartment, digging his key out of his pocket. It’s just until he fits the key into the lock that the pressure in his chest starts to alleviate, because he’s  _ home _ . 

When he heads inside he’s greeted by silence, and the lights are all off in the main room. The blanket he’d given Colleen earlier is still on the sofa, but folded now, and everything else is untouched. He takes his shoes and coat off quickly, leaving them by the door before he walks towards the bedroom to see if she’s there. Instead of Colleen he just finds another empty room, and after a quick check, he knows she’s not outside for any reason either.  _ I guess I thought she would be here _ , he frowns. 

He’s not entirely sure  _ why _ he’d expected that, it isn’t exactly surprising that she probably went into the center anyway, likely as a distraction. What isn’t so normal is that it’s nearing six and she’s not home yet, because she doesn’t usually stay late, but maybe today is the exception.  _ Maybe she just went in later so she’s staying later _ , he thinks, which  _ seems _ likely, so he decides to assume that that’s what’s going on - that’s the least worrying option. 

He always forgets how  _ quiet _ the apartment is when she’s not there, how empty it feels. Not that Colleen has ever been the most talkative when they’re both here, but he’s also rarely here when she  _ isn’t _ , and it feels like an important part of home is missing. He knows she’ll be back, so it doesn’t make sense to worry about any of it, even though it takes a minute for him to switch his focus back to anything besides that. Frowning, he fills a glass of water before sitting down at the kitchen island. 

For a minute he throws around the idea of making something for dinner before realizing that he has no idea when Colleen will be home, and she hadn’t answered him earlier in the day when he’d texted her to check in so he’s not even sure if she’d respond this time if he did ask.  _ I don’t want to push it _ , he decides, setting his phone down on the counter. 

Without really thinking about it, he heads over to sit down at the desk in front of the monitors and turns them on, mostly out of curiosity. They look like they haven’t been moved at all, and there’s a thin layer of desk over the screens. As far as he knows they’re still working, but he hasn’t actually checked since he got back. He’s been careful to avoid any sort of trouble or vigilante-type activities, even though that desire to continue protecting their small part of New York is still stirring in him. Maybe it always will be. Not as much as before - he’s learned that lesson - but the curiosity to see what’s going on is hard to ignore, especially when he doesn’t really have anything better to do. 

When the computer finally turn on he pulls up the surveillance programs, clicking through the various ones he’d set up. There doesn’t seem to really be  _ much _ going on, though enough that before, he probably would’ve gone out just to be ready to intervene if anything happened to get worse or go wrong. Half the time he’d gone out it hadn’t even been for anything  _ specific _ , just to be out there. 

_ I really should’ve been home more _ , he thinks, not for the first time. He thinks about all he missed out on by having spent more time out at night than he had at home, with Colleen. The nights he’d left even though she’d clearly wanted him to stay, the nights he could’ve been curled up and holding her and instead he spent fighting. He knows he shouldn’t think about that too much, either, because it’s  _ over  _ and the damage was already done. 

He also can’t really deny that he  _ had _ helped, overall. Maybe not towards the end - that was more of a mess than anything - but all he’d been doing hadn’t been for nothing. He just wishes, with hindsight, he’d never gotten so carried away. That he could’ve balanced time at home with time out at night helping, fighting. 

He watches the monitors tiredly, chin resting on his hand, considering. He watches something that is clearly sketchy in nature happen down by the docks unstopped, feels that itch to  _ move _ , to  _ do something _ . When he checks his phone again, there’s still no text from Colleen, and he’s still got no idea when she’ll be home. 

_ Stepping out just for a bit to check on things wouldn’t hurt _ , he thinks,  _ not to fight _ . Just long enough to go through his usual areas and see if everything is okay, but not get involved. The curiosity about how the area has been while he was gone has been harder and harder to ignore, and Colleen had never really told him anything about how it was all going. Seeing it during the day is hardly the same as at night, and the screens only show him so much. 

He makes the decision before he even _realizes_ he’s made the decision, and after a moment he stands up and goes to change out of his work clothes and into something warmer before he leaves. Hopefully Colleen won’t be _too_ annoyed with him as long as he doesn’t get involved with anything, which he has no intention to.   
  
_It’ll be fine_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "it'll be fine" famous last words


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> colleen is so Tired

 

  * _are you home?_



Colleen glances over at her phone at the  _ chirp _ to read the text - from Danny, of course - and sighs before reaching for it. It’s nearly midnight and he’s not back yet - though his work clothes were here, so he’d clearly been home earlier.  _ Honestly _ , she isn’t entirely sure she wants to know where he’s been. Either way, it’s the first she’s heard from him in several hours, and usually he tends to text her pretty frequently throughout the day so his silence this evening had been abnormal. 

 

  * __yes, why?__



When she doesn’t get a quick response she sets the phone back down and turns her attention back to her work. She manages to get through filling out one more paper before she gets a reply. 

 

  * __is the first aid kit still stocked?__



_ oh  _ hell  _ no _

 

  * __what did you do__



He doesn’t answer that text quickly, which,  _ go figure _ . After several minutes of trying not to think about it while trying to ignore her quickly mounting anxiety, she picks up the phone and tries to call him. He doesn’t answer that either. She sets the phone back down and rests her head in her hands for a minute, sighing, torn between being worried and laughing because this is  _ exactly _ what she should’ve expected.  _ damn him _ , she thinks, glancing at the phone again. 

Despite her best efforts to try and work again, she can’t focus anymore. She tries to ignore the fact that her heart is too fast, that she’s  _ worried _ , because now it’s been several more minutes of silence from him. 

When she hears footsteps outside the door she straightens up, looking over as the sound is quickly followed by it unlocking and being shoved open. Danny halfway stumbles in, pushing it shut behind him before he leans against it, looking  _ sick _ . He’s got one hand pressed to his side under his coat, which covers it enough so that she can’t see specifically what’s wrong, but she does see the  _ blood _ . It’s hard to miss that - bright red on his other hand, clearly still sticky-wet and smeared across what of his shirt she can see. 

“I’m sorry,” he starts, the first thing he’s said since he’d come in, and his shaking his head just a little. He lets out a tired, shaky breath, leaning his head back against the door as he tries to catch his breath. 

“What the  _ hell  _ Danny?” she gets up from her chair, moving a little closer but still keeping her distance. “You’re doing this again?”  _ no no no this isn’t happening again _

“ _ No _ , no  _ again _ , well-” he pauses as he pushes away from the door in a movement that clearly pains him as he lets out a tight breath. He looks  _ pale _ , which she knows isn’t good. “It was one thing. And it went to shit.”

“Of course it did. It  _ always _ does.” 

Colleen had always hated nights like this, and seeing him like this again is enough to make her heart race and her hands shake just a little, and there’s a tightening pressure in her chest as she watches him grab the first aid kit. It’s all too familiar - the blood, the shaky way he moves, the way this doesn’t feel real even though she knows that it’s happening. She clenches her hands into fists to try and stop the shaking, wrapping her arms tightly across her stomach until it hurts. 

“Can we please not talk about this right this second?” he asks as he sits down slowly, and his hands are shaking far worse than hers as he tries to remove his coat. 

“Don’t really think there’s anything to talk about. You’ve not even been back for a  _ month _ , and you’ve already come home bleeding.” she shakes her head, lips pressed together tightly. “This really shouldn’t surprise me.” 

“ _ Colleen _ ,” he says, then, looking up at her as she steps closer. “Please not right now.” 

She doesn’t reply because she’s not sure she has the words, because all she can feel is the aching frustration warring with the worry that she can’t ignore. Instead she just watches quietly as he pushes the torn part of his shirt out of the way to reveal the wound, and it’s worse than she’d originally expected, spanning at least six inches across his side, and it  _ doesn’t _ look shallow. 

When he tries to start cleaning it off with a trembling hand she intervenes, grabbing the kit away from him from where it’s precariously resting on his lap. 

“ _ Shit- _ just, come on,” she says, trying to push back the worry as she carefully hooks and arm underneath his to pull him into his feet. He almost immediately leans into her, seeming  _ relieved _ , and she stumbles briefly at the additional weight. He shifts one of his arms across her shoulders to hold onto her better as they start towards the bedroom, and she tries not to focus on the overwhelming smell of blood or the way it’s soaking into her shirt where their sides meet. 

She manages to get him to lay down on the bed, which he does gratefully, shutting his eyes the moment he’s down and taking another shaky breath. He looks even more pale now, more sick, which makes her wonder how much blood he’s already lost.  _ Do this fast _ , she thinks, as the worry gives way to all the familiar steps and motions. She quickly removes his shirt, dropping it onto the floor before she goes to grab the first aid kit, tugging gloves on as she walks back into the bedroom. 

“Hey, don’t pass out on me yet,” she says, to which he mumbles something that’s slightly slurred, though he does open his eyes to look at her again.  _ damn him _ . 

The wound is deep enough that it’s  _ bad _ , but not enough to warrant a hospital trip. After some quick cleaning and gentle prodding, it doesn’t  _ seem _ like there’s anything damaged internally, though it’s hard to tell with all of the blood. She thinks stitches should be fine, but either way he seems to have lost a considerable amount of blood already, enough that he’s crashing quickly. Her suspicions are pretty much confirmed when she disinfects the wound as best as she can and he doesn’t even make a sound, which is  _ not _ like him.  _ shit _

She sits down on the bed next to him while she prepares to do the stitches, startling briefly when he moves to grip her knee with a blood-slick hand. He’s staring at the ceiling now, a little bit glassy eyed, though the movement was clearly a conscious one so she doesn’t move his hand, which he just grips a little tighter. If it were a different situation, the feeling would be reassuring. 

The room is too quiet as she starts the stitches, the loudest sound being Danny’s tired, shaky breaths. He’s doing as she said - not passing out yet - keeping his eyes fixed either on her or the ceiling in an effort to stay awake. There’s still too much blood - from where she hadn’t stitched yet, from where it had already been all over him, and now it’s on the bed and on her and there’s too much  _ red _ . She takes a steadying breath and tries not to think about that, or the way her heart is racing in her chest - worse, now - or about how once again, he could’ve gotten himself killed.  _ stop thinking about that _

She puts her whole focus back into finishing the stitches, and he doesn’t say a single thing the whole time she’s working on that. When she’s done she carefully tries to clean up what blood she can, though it’s a nearly pointless attempt. It cleans up around the wound just fine, but it’s too soaked into everything else to be able to deal with right now. Getting him out of the rest of his bloody clothes or anything on the bed will have to wait until he can move himself, he’s too heavy for her to do it. 

“What happened?” she asks, forcing herself to keep her voice calm, but he just shakes his head a little and looks more out of it than he did before. With a sigh, she removes the bloody gloves and tosses them onto the floor by his shirt, and shifts to sit up next to his chest. She places a hand against his forehead, but he’s not  _ too _ concerningly warm yet, but she figures it’ll escalate into a fever like it usually does. Without really thinking about it she gently pushes some of his sweaty curls away from his face, frowning when his eyes drift shut again, though his grip on his knee hasn’t wavered. 

“Knife,” he mumbles after a moment, slowly, tiredly. 

“Figured. I don’t have antibiotics,” she says, pulling her hand away from her face when it occurs to her that she hasn’t moved it yet. “Never stocked up again after you left. So if this gets worse I’m taking you to a hospital because honestly, I don’t want to deal with that.”  _ Maybe _ it’s harsh, but it’s not a lie. She hasn’t missed stitching him up when he came home half dead, hasn’t missed all the rush of fear and anxiety and stress that always came with that. 

“‘m sorry.” 

“Yeah, well, you always are.” she sighs. “And it still happens. We’ll talk in the morning, just… try to get some rest.” She stands up and moves to step away, but his hand reaches out and grips hers, still sticky with blood as he gently squeezes her hand before letting go. She shuts her eyes tightly and looks up for a moment, away from him, taking a shaky breath as she tries not to linger on the feeling of his bloody hand around hers. It shouldn’t be a fairly familiar feeling. 

He doesn’t respond to that, so she just reaches for the first aid kit to move it off of the bed before finding a clean rag. She manages to clean off Danny’s hands and get his shoes off of him before she leaves him alone, because she’s pretty sure he’s asleep now. 

She steps into the bathroom to wash off her own hands, trying not to focus on the red swirling down the drain, or the building pressure in her chest as everything comes rushing back in. It’s a useless attempt. After she shuts the water off and dries her hands she leans back against the bathroom and lets out a shaking breath, pressing one hand over her mouth as she shuts her eyes again. 

_ I am not going to cry about this _ , she thinks, firmly, though when she opens her eyes and sees Danny laying on the bed again, it’s hard to force the tears back. He’s pale and limp and the line of stitches across his side are too prominent, the beginnings of another scar that will be right at home with the other visible ones on his chest. She can point to exactly which ones she had stitched up herself on similar nights to this, could tell you which ones had been minor and which were like  _ this _ . There’s a fierce, loving ache beating in her chest as she watches him, a feeling that  _ isn’t _ welcome, but also the worry and the fear, which are far worse.  _ I don’t want to do this again _ . 

For a long time, Colleen had wrestled with the feeling of being  _ enough _ . Enough for her father, enough for Bakuto, enough for Danny. Because as much as she cared about people, it had never seemed to go the other way. In the end it was always just her, hurt and abandoned again and again, a never ending cycle. As much as she’d tried, her father had never really cared about her and pushed her away at every opportunity. Bakuto had only been interested in her or cared as long as she was useful to him, played her the whole time, and the moment she stepped away he tried to kill her. With Danny it was complicated, though she thinks that of everyone he’s the closest she’d had to the love going just as strongly both ways, but he had left her all the same. 

For a long time, it was always the same questions running through her head. Why was she never enough? Why did everyone always leave?  _ What do I have to do to get people to stay? _

And when things were like this before, when Danny was too caught up in the vigilante things and home less and less, it had started to bring back all those feelings that she’d spent the last year trying so hard to bury. It was silly - she  _ knew _ he cared about her, loved her - but the moment things start to go wrong, those feelings have always reared their ugly head again and tried to drag her back into that cycle of anxiety. 

_ This is different it’s not like that anymore _ . 

_ Just breathe _ . 

She stays there for several more minutes while forcing herself to keep breathing at a steady pace, to  _ not _ freak out about this, slowly regaining her composure. When she feels a bit better she splashes cold water on her face and dries off before stepping back into the bedroom, only hesitating for a moment before moving to sit on the other side of the bed. After a second she reaches out to touch Danny’s forehead again, and he’s warmer than before, which she knows isn’t a good sign. If not a fever, likely the beginnings of one.  _ I should wake him up and make him take something _ . 

“Danny,” she starts, gently pushing at his shoulder. “I know I said to rest but you need to be up for a minute.” It takes a few more seconds for him to stir, confused until his gaze settles on her and he relaxes again, though not without a slight hiss of pain. 

“I’m pretty sure you’re running a fever or close to, I need you to take something for that,” she explains as she leaves the bed, and she  _ thinks _ he mumbles an “okay”. 

As soon as she’s got a couple of pills and a glass of water she sits back down beside him on the bed, pressing the cup into his hands. He seems steady enough to hold onto it, though he tries once to sit up by himself before she just gently slides her arm under his shoulders to help him up enough to take the pills. He groans at the movement, which clearly hurts him, but he takes the pills quickly before passing the cup back to her. He leans back into her for a moment, his head resting against her neck, and he’s sweaty and too warm and shaking a little so she tightens her arm around him. For just a second she lets herself turn her head to rest against his, nose pressed against his hair as she takes a moment to breathe and hold onto him before she carefully moves to let him lay back down again. 

Since he’s laying on top of the blankets she finds a couple spare ones to spread over him. She finds a change of clothes so she can get out of the bloody ones, feeling more relaxed the moment the blood-sticky feeling against her is gone. She turns off the lights before sitting back down on her side of the bed, letting out another shaky breath.  _ Maybe _ things will be fine,  _ maybe _ he had a legitimately good reason for going out again, but right now all of that feels pointless. Because right now he’s injured and laying in bed next to her, sick and in pain, and she  _ hates  _ it. 

She rubs at her eyes again before reluctantly laying down, finally realizing how exhausted she is. She doesn’t really want to sleep - she’d prefer to stay up and keep an eye on him - but her body has other plans. Eventually she curls up on her side, careful not to touch him, shutting her eyes tiredly. After pulling the blankets over herself she settles down more, falling asleep to the comforting sound of Danny’s steady breaths next to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah this is the worst drama to happen in this, it was inevitable


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha yeah i forgot to update this yesterday

Danny wakes once in the very early hours of the morning, in pain and she thinks feverish, and she’s woken by the weak grip of his hand on her arm. His hand is shaky, his breaths unsteady, and for a few minutes she thinks about taking him to a hospital. He’s clearly in a lot of pain so she helps him get more medicine down, and she ends up staying up with him until he seems to be doing better. It’s a long hour, because he’s tired and disoriented and despite knowing that this will get better, it’s an all around stressful situation and she just wants it to be over. 

She ends up sitting right next to him, his shoulder pressed against her hip and his head resting at her side. He’s sweaty when she gently runs her fingers through his hair a few times until he relaxes, and as the hour ticks on, eventually his shivering fades and he falls back asleep still pressed against her side. She doesn’t sleep much after that. 

The second time he wakes, it’s nearing nine in the morning. She’s sitting on the chair by the bed wrapped up in a blanket, trying not to fall asleep as she attempts to get work done on the computer even though the screen is giving her a headache. She’d already texted Albert from Danny’s phone to tell him that he’s not coming in, made up some excuse about Danny being sick and left it at that. 

Danny wakes slowly - there’s a slight shift in his breathing that she notices almost immediately, followed by a groan as he opens his eyes to the bright light coming in through the window. He moves a little, rubbing at his eyes with one hand before he  _ tries _ to sit up, which he seems to realize very quickly is a pointless attempt going by the pained sound he makes. 

“Colleen?” he asks, his voice rough and almost strained, but he seems far more alert than he’d been throughout the night. There’s more focus in his eyes when he turns his head to look at her, but she simply frowns a little before looking away. 

She can’t really decide if she’s pissed off at him or worried, or somehow  _ both _ , though either way the anxious pressure in her chest has yet to alleviate. She’s so  _ tired _ . 

“I’m sorry,” he starts,  _ again _ . 

She’s getting sick of hearing that. 

“I think the wound is getting infected,” she interrupts, still not looking at him. “I’m probably going to take you to a hospital.” 

“ _ Colleen _ .” His voice is almost pleading this time, but she still can’t make herself look at him. He tries to sit up again, which doesn’t go well, so he just sighs. “I don’t know if that’s necessary. And can I at least explain what happened?” 

She shuts her eyes for a moment, taking a steadying breath that doesn’t help even a little, before shutting the computer and looking down at her lap tiredly. 

“Do you remember, after your leg was broken, what you said to me?” He’s quiet in response, but she can feel him watching her. “You said that scaring me was the last thing you ever wanted to do.” She takes a shaky breath, hating that miserable, choking sort of feeling that fills her chest. 

“I wasn’t lying.” 

“Maybe you weren’t, but then that night you asked me to train you. I  _ hated _ you for that, for a while.”  _ Don’t cry _ . “And then you asked me to take the iron fist. With both of those things, you scared me again, and then you  _ left _ .”  _ do. not. cry.  _ “You have…  _ no idea _ , do you, how… frightening it was to come home only for you to be gone? To come home expecting to see you and finding nothing but a letter instead, expecting to be able to talk to you and  _ fix _ things only to realize that you’d  _ left me _ .” 

_ Shit _ . 

For the past couple of weeks she’d been trying not to say it, say any of it, because saying it made her feel too weak and vulnerable in a way she wasn’t ready to be around him yet. Because she’d been  _ over  _ it, at least, she convinced some part of her that she’d been. She’d been  _ trying _ to be done with that, to put it all behind her, but now all that aching sense of anxiety and fear and  _ abandonment _ is pressing at her chest again in a way that makes it hard to breathe. 

“I let you back in. I let you stay here again. I was thinking that things would be okay this time around and then you do  _ this _ . You could’ve  _ died _ , Danny, don’t you get that? If that wound had been any deeper you wouldn’t have made it home.” 

“I wasn’t seeking this out. The only reason I went out was to just look around again, I had no intentions for this to happen. I just… couldn’t  _ not _ get involved when I realized people were about to get hurt. I know that doesn’t excuse anything, but-”

“You’re right, it doesn’t. And maybe that’s your  _ flaw _ , Danny. That you can’t ever  _ not _ get involved. That you can’t ever leave things alone, and never seem to consider the consequences for  _ you _ .” She almost laughs. “I should hate that about you, but I can’t. You’re so  _ good _ , and it’s hard to hate you for it when you have such genuine intentions. I just… want to stop being afraid  _ for _ you,  _ because _ of you. Then you do shit like this again, and it makes me wonder how long I can handle it.” 

Danny is quiet at that,  _ too _ quiet, and she wants to stay more but her throat feels closed up. Instead she puts her focus on keeping her breaths even, on  _ not _ crying, or letting Danny realize that she might. This isn’t at all what she wanted to do or say this morning - she wanted to take him to a hospital the moment he woke up, not start a conversation that looks like it’ll end with her in tears. It’s exhausting. 

“I… it was never my intention to hurt you, you know that, right? I need you to know that. I never meant to hurt you, or scare you, or anything like that. I  _ did _ , I understand that. I  _ regret _ that. And, yeah, I really do have a shitty cycle of continuing to do that.” 

He pauses, but she still can’t look at him. 

“I shouldn’t have abandoned you. That’s the real problem here, right? Abandonment. I mean, hell, I  _ know _ your history with that. I regret that more than everything, becoming another name on the list of people who have left you, who have  _ hurt _ you like that. You deserved better, Colleen. I wasn’t good to you then.” 

She gives in, resting her head in her hands to hide her face, shutting her eyes tightly as they blur with unshed tears, trying not to be overwhelmed. Because he’s  _ right _ , and she kind of hates that he’s right, that he figured it out so quickly. This is about abandonment, and maybe it always will be. 

“Colleen, if you want me to leave, I can. Because the thing is, I just… I can’t ever promise you that  _ this _ won’t ever happen again. Knowing our lives, it’s bound to. I can promise that I’ll try to avoid it, be careful. But last night? That wasn’t me trying to start this up again. That’s the  _ last _ thing I want right now.” He pauses for a moment and she hears him moving, and she glances up at him just a little and watches as he carefully shifts into a sitting position even though it’s clearly painful. 

“I want to focus on fixing things, on making up for where we went wrong, where  _ I  _ went wrong. That’s what I’m trying to do right now. There was something else I said the night I left, not in the letter, and you can ask Ward if it’s true - he’s the one I told. I told him that the reason I had to leave was so that I could become the man you deserve, because I  _ wasn’t _ . I hated that.” 

“You still left. Like everyone else.”  _ I feel sick _ . “And you couldn’t even tell me in person.”

“Leaving wasn’t about hurting you. I think you know as well as I do that if I had stayed, we would’ve been in an even worse position than this. If I had stayed, we would’ve been running this relationship into the ground until there was nothing left to salvedge. What’s done is done - and what was done was shitty and wrong of me. I shouldn’t have left the way I did -  _ I know that _ .” he shakes his head sadly, meeting her eyes. “God, I thought about it every single day, regretting that day more than anything. Regretting my choices. You have every right to be angry with me, yell at me, any of it. I’ll take that. But I can regret it for the rest of my life and it isn’t going to change what happened.” he sighs. “I guess what I’m saying it, we can’t go back. We can’t change it. But I know that I want to change  _ because of _ it, I know that that’s still an option for us if that’s the path we choose.” 

“I don’t know what to think anymore.” It’s the truth, as confusing and shitty as it is. 

“Maybe you don’t have to know right now. There’s no… time limit on figuring things out again. I just know that we can’t do anything until we get past  _ this _ , at least until we start to.”

_ He’s right _ . 

She looks away from him again, taking another slow breath and wiping at her eyes. She did hate him for leaving at first, but somewhere over the course of being gone, that pain and that feeling had dulled. It had turned into something else, something less strong. Confusion, maybe, because  _ why _ did it always happen to her,  _ why _ did no one ever stay. That had faded into something else, and dull ache beating at her heart that she’s tried and tried and tried to ignore, but clung to her every day despite that. The more she tried to ignore it, the more she let the anger at him settle in her chest, the harder it’s been.  _ I can’t do that anymore. _

_ This is never going to stop hurting until you forgive him for it.  _

_ Maybe it’s time to start that _ . 

“Don’t ever leave me like that again.” 

Danny laughs, just slightly before it turns into a sharp pained sound, but the laugh sounds more sad than amused. “ _ That _ I can promise you. I’ll never do that to you again.”

__ okay  
  
“I can start to forgive you, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> progress! finally! and mostly gets better/fluffier from here tbh


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i no longer know what day of the week it is ever anymore so i keep forgetting to post
> 
> however
> 
> this one is pure fluff enjoy

The next few days after their talk are easier. At least, it’s less tense, less awkward. There’s a new sort of comfort there that wasn’t there before, and Colleen is relieved. Things aren’t perfect, but it’s getting better. With everything out in the open now and having more or less at least  _ started _ to talk about their issues, being at home and around Danny hasn’t been so hard. He’s been stuck in the apartment since his injury, because she’d shut him down immediately when he’d even suggested going into work.

He’d been doing better slowly over the past couple days, up and moving around only after she’d made him stay in bed almost the whole day after he was injured. He’s still in pain but it’s not nearly as bad as before, and despite what she’d expected, so far there hadn’t been any signs of infection. Most of the day he still spends resting, which makes for quiet afternoons like today, where there’s rare sunlight shining into the apartment and everything feels  _ calm _ and settled. 

Unfortunately, because she had decided against going into the center today, it means that she has no excuses left to continue ignoring the ever-growing pile of papers and mail that have been piling up in drawers and on the desk for months. It had always been Danny who had bothered to actually sort through the mail, and when he was gone, she’d fallen into a bad habit of just pulling out any bills or immediately important things before tossing the rest into a pile with the intention to deal with it later.  _ Later _ had turned into a month, and then  _ months _ , and now the drawer is full and the stack on the desk is nearly tipping over. 

She twists her hair up out of the way before pulling the drawer out and setting it on the floor, sitting down next to it and pulling the small trash can over to her. The pile on the desk is worse, so the drawer seemed like the easier place to start. Most of what’s in it is trash by now, things that might’ve been useful when she’d gotten it, but wouldn’t be now. A few things she sets aside to look at again later, but most of it goes straight into the trash that’s already filling up too quickly. 

When she gets near the bottom of the drawer she notices a larger, unmarked tan envelope and pulls it out, frowning. She opens it up and tips it over, grabbing the papers that fall out. The  _ pictures _ . 

Pictures of her and Danny. 

It takes her a moment to place them, shoving the drawer out of the way to set them down on the floor and spread them out, looking at them for a minute before she finally realizes what they are. The pictures that Mary had been taking of them without their knowledge, which she’d then  _ given _ to them.  _ I forgot about these _ , she thinks, flipping one over that turns out to be one of Danny. She  _ thought _ that they’d gotten thrown out a long time ago, not been buried in the drawer with everything else. 

_ God, that was a weird day _ . That had been one of the more interesting days of her life, for sure, first with finding out that they’d been  _ stalked _ and then the dinner party that went to shit. It’s almost funny now, she decides, because all of it feels so long ago and so unreal. The only physical reminder that it did happen are the pictures spread out in front of her. 

She sorts through the pictures, settling on a few that had been taken of her and Danny when they’d been on their date. They’re both smiling in those pictures,  _ happy _ , which almost seems strange now. She  _ knows _ that they had been happy then, remembers smiling and laughing and the overall light feeling she’d had enjoying that time with him. It was one of the last moments with him that she’d  _ been _ happy, the moment forever frozen in time as evidence of that. And then it had all gone wrong. 

Colleen has never really been the normal dating type, she knows this,  _ Danny _ knew this. All the cliche sort of date things had never been  _ her _ , or anything she’d really done, and for a while she had kind of refused to even use the word. It just seemed strange to her, didn’t seem like the right word. Danny, though just as unused to it all as she is, had taken this in stride. She can’t help but smile a little when she remembers what Danny had said to her on their walk home after - correctly - realizing that despite the kitchen fight, she’d enjoyed their  _ date _ . 

_ ‘Every Tuesday?’ _

They’d never been able to, she realizes now, even though  _ every Tuesday _ had been the plan. After that night everything started to go wrong, and their plan was quickly forgotten in the chaos of it all. She wonders sometimes what it would’ve been like if it hadn’t gone wrong. If they would’ve been okay, if they’d have been  _ happy _ , if date night every Tuesday would have become the most normal thing in the world. If instead of being apart for a year, they would have been here  _ together _ , still in love. 

_ Stop thinking about it _ , she tells herself, sighing. Maybe things were always meant to go this way, maybe it would have been inevitable for them to part ways - if temporarily - no matter how it had all gone. She’s not really sure anymore. But looking down at that picture, all she knows is that they  _ had  _ been happy, if only for such a short amount of time in the grand scheme of things. That will never change. She tries not to let herself wonder if they’ll ever  _ really _ be there again. 

“What are you looking at?”

His voice surprises her, since she hadn’t heard him get up, and the glances over her shoulder to see him walking over to join her. He’s still moving gingerly, cautious, and he’d told her that morning that the wound was just in the perfect place that most movements tugged at the stitches in a painful or uncomfortable way. 

“I’m trying to clean out the desk a bit. I found the stalker pictures that Mary took of us,” she explains, passing him the few she’d been holding when he reaches her side. She looks up at him, watching as he smiles a little as he flips through the pictures. 

“Is it sad that the only reason we have pictures together is because someone was stalking us?” Danny asks, and she chokes a little on a laugh, unable to  _ not _ smile at that. 

“Yeah, it’s a little sad.” 

“They’re not  _ bad _ pictures though, I’ll give her that. She was good with a camera.” He says, handing two of the pictures back but keeping the third, heading over into the kitchen. 

She watches curiously as he approaches the fridge, taking a moment too long to realize what he’s doing.  _ oh _

He grabs one of the small magnets from the side and uses it to pin the picture up, the one of them smiling at each other while in the restaurant. There’s a weird sort of feeling in her chest, something both affectionate and  _ sad _ as he looks back over at her and smiles. 

“Might as well use the pictures if we’ve got them, yeah?” he asks. 

She forces a smile. “Yeah.” 

He joins her by the desk again as she reaches to grab the stack on top as a way to distract herself, sitting down carefully on the other side of the drawer. 

“Want some help? Not like I’m doing much else.” 

“Sure.” 

It  _ is _ hard being here with him again, she decides. Because he doesn’t even think twice before doing something like putting a picture of them up on the fridge, making her tea, being the same kind and thoughtful person he was when they were actually dating. She wishes she could just push back all the feelings, the fact that a part of her  _ misses _ that, and bury it as deep as possible. It’s getting harder and harder though, and sitting on the floor here with him now in a comfortable silence makes it harder to  _ not _ think about. 

Looking across at him now, watching the way his eyes light up a little and he smiles as he gathers up the rest of the pictures, sorting through them, it’s almost impossible to not think about. 

_ Yeah _ , she thinks, her throat tight.  _ I miss that _ .    
  


\-----

Being stuck mostly in the apartment is quick to drive Danny crazy. Colleen has continued to insist that he needs rest, because the wound is  _ bad _ , but that has meant that for the past week he’s hardly left the apartment. He’s stir crazy, trying to find really anything he can do that doesn’t make the wound worse. She knows it’s still hurting him enough to even do  _ too  _ much stretching, let alone anything more than that, and not having the physical outlet is taking a toll. 

It gets a little irritating after the first few days, but by the end of the week she’s just as annoyed as Danny is with the situation. 

The solution to that, she decided, was to ask him about his list of things to catch up. Which was how she was here, now, making popcorn while he rents the movie they’d picked out to watch. A  _ distraction _ . A distraction that, before, had been such a normal occurrence in their life - they’d spent a lot of nights curled up together watching movies on Danny’s list or ones that she’d recommended. She hadn’t really watched anything while he’d been gone, and he’d mentioned that he hadn’t really gotten around to seeing anything else either, so she’s looking forward to it as much as he is even though she’s already seen their chosen movie. 

“Movie’s ready,” he calls from the other room, and she looks up at the microwave. Thirty more seconds. 

“Just a minute.” She pulls a bowl out from one of the cabinets while she waits, and as soon as it’s done - and cooled down enough for her to open it - she dumps the contents of the bag in and heads into the bedroom. Danny is sitting cross-legged on his side of the bed, with the computer sitting in front of him, and he looks up at her with a slight smiles as she enters. 

She hands him the bowl while she gets settled, slipping under the cover because it’s cold enough that even with sweatpants and a hoodie on, she can’t seem to shake the chill. After adjusting the pillows behind her into a more comfortable position, she leans back and stretches her legs out. 

“Here, take this-” Danny starts, handing her the bowl back while he shifts into a better position and pulls the computer onto his lap, making it easier for both of them to see. Which, she realizes, now has them sitting right next to each other, and she can feel the warmth of him where their shoulders and legs brush together. As cold as she is, it’s  _ nice _ , and she has to resist every unwanted urge to lean into him. It’s already late, and she’s tired, so the whole situation just makes her want to curl up against his side even though she’s really  _ not _ supposed to be doing that.  _ Don’t think about it _ . 

“Ready?” he asks, and when she nods he hits play, quickly turning the volume up the rest of the way so that they can at least mostly hear it. 

It’s a movie that she’s seen before a few times now, so she quickly finds her attention less on the actual movie than it is on Danny. She just halfway watches him quietly, notes the way that his complete, serious attention is turned onto the screen in his lap, sees the slight crease in his brow as he focuses on it. He doesn’t seem to notice - or is pretending not to - that their shoulders are shoved together now as she leans into him  _ just _ a little to see the screen better, which makes it easier to pretend that that’s her only reason for moving closer. 

She’s sleepier than she thought, and even though Danny is still actively commenting on things while she quietly hums in response, she’s not really hearing what he’s saying. When he starts pointing out how ridiculous and inaccurate the action scenes are, she can’t help but smile a little. 

“It’s completely unrealistic.” 

“It’s a movie, Danny.” 

“ _ Still _ ,” he insists, and she laughs. 

She gives up about halfway through the movie and rests her head against his shoulder, unable to resist the urge to smile again when he moves his arm to accommodate her without even seeming to think about it, not even looking over at her as he does it. They’re leaning back more now so the position is comfortable, and he’s  _ warm _ , and the movie playing and his ongoing commentary is comforting. 

Even though she  _ knows _ that she really shouldn’t, she’s missed this a lot more than she wants to admit - the feeling of total warmth and security she finds when tucked up against him, with his arm wrapped around her with just the right amount of pressure. It’s  _ good _ . It’s comforting in a way that not many other things are to her, and she doesn’t even realize when she completely drifts off. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> theyre in Love


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> accidental cuddling

Danny wakes up slowly to the warmth of something pressed up against him. It doesn’t register at first  _ why _ he’s so warm, but then he shifts a little and there’s hair tickling his face, the smell of shampoo,  _ Colleen’s _ shampoo, and  _ oh _ . He tries not to move, realizing that he’s laying with Colleen tucked up against his body, one of his arms wrapped firmly around her middle and her head resting right near his chin. 

It feels like the most natural thing in the world.

It also shouldn’t be happening. 

_ I need to move right now _ , he thinks. He doesn’t. 

It wasn’t at all unusual for this to happen  _ before _ , in fact it was most common than anything; he’s had a long standing habit of pulling her close in his sleep, so maybe he should’ve thought about that before agreeing to share a bed with her again. He remembers her falling asleep against his shoulder last night during the movie, which was something he hadn’t expected but hadn’t stopped either. He’d carefully moved her without waking her up when the movie had ended, and scooted back so that they weren’t touching anymore. Clearly, it had been a useless effort. 

_ I need to move _ , he thinks, again. 

_ However _ , if he’s being honest with himself, he really doesn’t want to move. Partly because he’s pretty certain she’s still asleep, and moving would wake her up, and partly because she’s warm and soft against him and he’s missed that. He’s missed how she fits perfectly against him, how much he’s always cherished waking up with his love in his arms.  _ Except this isn’t the same as before and we’re not together,  _ he reminds himself for what feels like the millionth time, hating that ache in his chest as the thought. He hates how that ache seems to move through his whole body, like it’s not ever going to go away. He misses  _ her _ , even when she’s right here in his arms. That’s the worst of it all, he thinks. 

Instead of moving away he gives in, tucking his head down more against hers gently, soaking up the moment before it inevitably ends. Everything about this is too familiar in a painful sort of way now, because he knows that this will be over soon. Because while  _ before _ even if she woke up now, neither of them would really even  _ think _ of moving apart. Usually, she refused to let him get up. But now he knows that this probably isn’t a good thing, that he needs to move because she might be mad if she wakes up like this, knows that he has to get up and leave the moment behind. 

_ Everything was so much easier before _ . 

He gives himself another couple minutes to just soak up the feeling of her being in his arms, of her warmth, of how if he shuts his eyes he can pretend that things are  _ normal _ and  _ okay _ . 

But then it’s over, because it’s getting later and he knows that she’ll be waking up soon, and he doesn’t want to try and explain this. So, reluctantly, he carefully pulls his arm away, trying not to move her too much in the process. He only hesitates for a second before pressing a light kiss to the side of her head, lingering for a moment before pulling away and pushing himself up out of the bed.    
  


\-----   
  


Waking up in his arms had been  _ unexpected _ . She thinks that this is what woke her up - him putting an arm around her, moving closer, the sudden rush of warmth against her. He’s still clearly asleep, limbs loose and relaxed, his breaths deep and even. For a moment she’s afraid to move, contemplating what to do while trying not to wake him up. 

It’s a cold morning even with the blankets, and he’s  _ warm _ . For a second she considers just closing her eyes and trying to go back to sleep; wonders that if maybe her eyes are closed, she can pretend that this is  _ good _ and  _ okay _ and something that she can allow herself. For a minute she could accept the reality that she wishes it was. 

There’s too many things about this that feel completely normal and natural, when right now they  _ shouldn’t _ be. His arm is firm around her waist, his chest pressed against her back, and his hand spread and resting over his stomach in a way that she’s always found  _ comforting _ . The way they’re laying right now has his head level with hers, his lips against her neck in a way that she knows isn’t intentional - he’s  _ asleep _ \- but is nice nonetheless. 

And maybe that’s the worst thing about all of this - it’s  _ nice _ . She  _ wants _ this. She wants to push back into his embrace and relax, fall back asleep, soak up the moment while it lasts. The problem being in the fact that she’s not supposed to want that.  _ None of this can be easy _ , she decides, contemplating moving before deciding that it’s not worth it. His hold on her is tight enough that there’s no way to move without waking him, which would just make all of this worse. Instead all she does is shift a little so her head is more tucked under his chin to pull away from the far too intimate feeling of his lips against her neck, of the things that that makes her want. That makes it a little bit easier to slowly make herself relax against him, forcing herself to breathe more evenly again. 

Since the moment he’d gotten back, there has been a part of her that wants nothing more than to fall back into how they were before, a lingering thought in the back of her head that she has tried not to entertain. It would’ve been easy to fall back into  _ normal _ , too. Danny clearly wants that - he might think he’s hiding it, but she knows him, knows how to read him. The fact that he’s  _ not _ actively trying to make that happen again is, somehow, why the thought of it is easier to think about than she wants it to be. Moments like this make her want it even more. 

She notices the exact moment his breathing starts to change, and his arm tightens around her involuntarily as he wakes up. Then she feels the exact moment that he stiffens up, and she figures it’s for the same reason that she had - not expecting this. Carefully, she keeps herself relaxed against him and stays settled in his embrace, her breaths measured and deep, not really sure if she wants him to know that she’s already awake. If he hasn’t figured it out already, she’s not sure, but maybe the lingering sleepiness when just waking up will be enough to hide it from him. 

For a few minutes he doesn’t move away, actually pulls her  _ closer _ , which she tries not to like but realizes it’s quickly a useless attempt.  _ Shit _ . 

_ This can’t be happening again _ , she thinks, the moment it really settles in what’s happening and that anxious twist starts in her stomach. For the past few weeks she’d  _ thought _ that she could ignore it, deny it, pretend that being around him doesn’t make her happier or pretend that him smiling at her doesn’t make her chest near burst with a warm sort of affection for him. Right now, in the quiet cold morning, it’s hard to deny any of it. 

When Danny finally moves he’s very careful about it, trying to move her as little as possible as he pulls away from her. The bed shifts as he leans over, and she doesn’t realize what he’s doing until he presses a kiss against the side of her head, gentle and lingering, and- 

_ Oh _

That warm burst of affection in her chest is, in fact, impossible to ignore now and she’s half tempted to reach out and pull him into a hug. But he moves away too quickly, and when she opens her eyes and looks over, he’s already left the room. 

_ Maybe this is happening again _ . 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> obviously we needed some soft 
> 
> anyway this and like the next few chapters are real short but then there's a dog so who cares


	12. Chapter 12

Cooking is, to put it simply, not her strong point. She can do basics, and some other things, but Danny has always been the one to do anything more complicated or experiment. But since she’d gotten back he’d pretty much taken over cooking without a word because he knows she doesn’t really enjoy doing it - he does - and he was all-around better at it. 

The fact that he  _ is _ doing most if not all of it has been making her feel a little guilty though, so she’d decided to go ahead and cook tonight. Which, predictably, had quickly done wrong, which was how she was now in the kitchen  _ with _ Danny while he helps. This had been the opposite of what she’d been trying to do, but he didn’t seem to mind either way, and the soup had gotten put together much faster than she would’ve gotten it on her own, and he’d put the already-baked bread in the oven to warm it up a little. The soup has been cooking for a while, but she can’t really tell if it’s actually ready yet or if the vegetables are cooked, so she grabs a small bowl to cool some off to test it. 

She’s been distracted all night - by herself, by Danny, by trying not to think too much about thing - and she’s not exactly sure what happens, but before she can even really process it she’s managed to spill some of the soup on her shirt, and it’s  _ hot _ . 

“ _ Shit _ ,” she sighs, setting the bowl down and tugging at her shirt to get it away from her skin because the broth is easily hot enough to burn. Danny is at her side in a moment with a rag, and she hadn’t realized that he’d been paying attention, but he quickly hands it to her to clean herself up while he grabs a second from the drawer. 

“I’ll clean this up, go change,” he insists, and she just mumbles a quick  _ thank you _ before heading to the bedroom. 

She carefully removes her shirt and tosses it into the hamper before putting on the first thing within reach in the drawer. When she joins Danny in the kitchen again he’s already cleaned up what had spilled onto the floor, and pulled out a couple of bowls that he’s currently dishing the soup into, as well as getting the bread out of the oven.  _ This is why he cooks _ , she thinks, mildly amused at how quickly he works. 

“It tastes better than I thought it would,” he says, not looking over at her as he grabs a couple of spoons. She figures that if  _ he _ thinks okay then it’s probably at least edible for something that had mostly been thrown together without any sort of recipe. Then again, he’ll eat most things, so she’s still a little wary of it. 

When he turns to set the bowls over on the island he hesitates for a moment, his eyes on her, and  _ that’s _ the moment she realizes that she hadn’t put a long sleeved shirt on.  _ You’re getting too comfortable _ , she tells herself, taking an instinctive step back and considering leaving the room to change  _ again _ before he just looks away, thankfully not making a big deal out of it. 

So far, she’d managed to keep it hidden. Long sleeves or at least jackets and sweaters during the way, even sleeping in a long sleeved shirt at night. It wasn’t like she was doing much different than she had been before he’d gotten back, she hadn’t let anyone else see the tattoo either. With Danny, the motivation for keeping it covered was different though. He’d already seen it before, so now it was more of a way to....  _ prevent _ the conversation about it, or at least push it back. It kept their talk away from the night she’d gotten it, the night he’d asked her to take the iron fist.  _ Maybe it’s gone on long enough though _ .  _ Maybe I’m being ridiculous _ , she thinks, frowning. 

After an awkwardly long moment of hesitation, sh finally moves over to sit on the stool next to Danny, pulling the bowl of soup a little closer. She doesn’t say anything, and neither does he, so she just tries to focus on dinner instead of on the fact that he’s clearly trying hard not to look over at her and failing. She tries not to feel exposed, because it’s really getting old and he’s  _ seen _ it before and  _ maybe I just need to calm down _ . 

“You’re staring at it,” she points out after a moment of him trying to subtly pretend that he  _ isn’t _ looking at the tattoo. 

“Sorry.” He finally  _ actually _ looks over at her now, meeting her eyes, before he tentatively reaches over for her. “Can I?” 

There’s a millions thoughts that rush through her head but she can’t seem to focus on a single one of them, only on the fact that for a second she can’t breathe and tenses up, resisting the urge to move away. Instead she nods mutely, setting her spoon down and trying not to pull away when he reaches out for her. 

He carefully takes her forearm in one hand and starts to very gently trace the tattoo with his other, running his fingers lightly across it, following the curling details of it as it travels down her arm. After a moment she realizes that she’s holding her breath and and forces herself to breathe, watching his hand instead of looking up at his face, because that’s too much. He traces back down the tattoo slowly, looking up at her even though she’s avoiding his eyes, and she really has no idea what to think of this situation. He’s so gentle, and his fingers are barely-there light as they slip back down to her wrist. 

“I’m sorry for this. I’m sorry that I ever put you in that position, where you had to make this choice.” Danny hesitates, shifting his hands so that they’re just gently holding her forearm. “That wasn’t fair of me, or right,” he says softly, looking down at the tattoo again. 

“It is what it is.” 

“That doesn’t make it right, what I did,” he insists, looking up at her again and she finally finds it in her to look at him. He looks a little bit sad and a little bit tired, and it’s hard to look him in the eye so she looks down again instead. 

“No, it doesn’t,” she agrees. “But I’m more at peace with it now. It hasn’t really been a huge deal.” 

“Have you used it at all, besides when we were fighting Davos?” he asks curiously. 

“No, actually. It’s… I can  _ feel _ it, it’s there, under my skin. But that’s all it is.  _ There _ . I know how to use it, though it takes a lot of concentration to hold onto it for long, it just doesn’t seem necessary to use it. There’s not any  _ pull _ . And it’s not like I’ve been fighting, or had any reason to,” she explains. 

“Thank you, though, for taking it. I don’t remember if I ever thanked you for that, but…” he trails off, but he smiles just a little. 

There’s no real guide for falling back in love, no clear defined steps that you’re supposed to take or not take, she decides. She’s not even entirely sure if she ever fell  _ out _ of it, which is what makes this complicated and messy and strange. She’s still not sure if she’s ready to really  _ admit _ that all of those feelings are still there, but sitting with him now in the quiet apartment while he absentmindedly starts up the light tracing motion across her forearm again, it’s hard to  _ deny _ it. It’s also hard to deny that she’s afraid of that. 

“I’m sorry I pushed you away so much during all of that. There were definitely better ways to handle that, I just… couldn’t at the time.” She watches as his hand stills briefly against her arm before he continues, just slower this time. 

“Well, I could’ve been less pushy about it, that would have helped,” he says quietly. 

“You could’ve. We could’ve  _ talked _ , which would’ve been the better way to go about that. The fault isn’t all with you anyway, so. I’m sorry.” It feels good to say it, like a weight lifting off of her chest that she’s been carrying for far too long now. Maybe the way she reacted wasn’t entirely unjustified, but she knows that it hurt him. She tries not to think about it all too much, just wants to push past it until it barely feels like it happened. 

He doesn’t respond but when she looks up at him he’s smiling again, still gently holding her arm, and she almost wishes she could make the warm feelings in her chest go away. After a moment she pulls her arm away when the feelings turn more towards anxiety, because  _ this needs to stop _ , and he seems to notice her sudden discomfort and turns so that he’s not facing her anymore. She digs her nails into her palm and turns away from him, wishing that they could find some sort of balance, something between  _ too much _ and awkward, uncomfortable silences. She wonders if they ever will. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this close to just posting the rest of it immediately because i keep forgetting to update shfhfhfshhs 
> 
> ALMOST to the dog like two more chapters i think


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: never going to stop with colleen angst

Colleen doesn’t know when she’ll be able to look at Danny without wondering when he’s going to leave again. It’s not always a prominent thought, but always lingers in the back of her head like an increasing anxiety. He’s promised her over and over that he’s not going to, but it’s hard to believe him when she’d never thought that he’d leave her  _ before _ . And then he had. Even though he’s insisting that he’s not - unless she wants him to - it’s been impossible to convince herself that he’s being completely honest. Every time she looks at him there’s just this tight, pressing feeling when she thinks about it. 

Which is  _ stupid _ . He doesn’t lie to her, she knows this. But even though she knows that, she still can’t quite believe him. Even when they’re in the kitchen cooking together or watching a movie, or anything that even vaguely feels  _ normal _ , the fear won’t go away. She wonders sometimes if it ever will. If he’ll ever be able to convince her that he’s not leaving her again, disappearing without a word, and if she’ll ever be able to let herself believe him. 

Too many people she’s cared about have left her behind now, and it’s crippling her ability to trust that everyone isn’t going to leave. She  _ knows _ she has issues, that’s not really up for debate, but it’s been harder and harder to claw her way through the doubts. The closer she gets to him again, the harder it is, and the more those doubts sink into her chest. 

But looking at Danny, she knows she wants to find a way to trust again. She’s just not sure how. 

She sits down on the mats up against the wall, taking a breath and brushing her sweaty hair back from her face. She watches Danny idly, who is once more hardly winded after a brief and cautious spar. He’d been excited to finally get back to more active training after his injury, and she’d joined him when he’d asked, and it’s  _ good _ .

While she’d taken a break after their sparring match, he’d gone straight into working through katas again. She can’t help but smile  _ just _ a little, because this is how they’d really started in the first place.  _ Sparring _ . When to her, he was just the homeless man who wouldn’t leave her doko, who had then turned out to actually be  _ very good _ at martial arts. And then he wouldn’t quit coming back.  _ I’m glad he did _ , she thinks, idly, as she continues watching him, trying to ignore the sharp sadness in her chest that never seems to want to go away when she thinks about it. 

She looks away, reaching for her water bottle and taking a drink, finally feeling a little more rested after sparring and a little less  _ off _ . 

“Do you think you’ll ever enjoy fighting again, like you did before?” 

“What?” she asks, looking over at Danny, who is now standing a little closer. She  _ heard _ what he said, but doesn’t really know how to answer. 

When he repeats the question, he really seems genuinely curious. 

“I honestly don’t know, Danny.” 

He moves to join her against the wall, sitting down right beside her with their shoulders shoved together, and for once she doesn’t mind. 

“If this is too forward of me, I’m sorry, and just tell me to stop, but… You always light up when you spar, did you know that? Honestly, you always have. Doesn’t matter if you weren’t in the best mood, the  _ moment _ you start sparring you… you’re  _ different _ .” He pauses, looking over at her, seeming like he’s trying to gauge her reaction. “You perk up, you’re excited, I can see it in your eyes." 

She stares ahead, wondering if she should look over at him but not sure if she has it in her. She fiddles with the hem of her shirt, just listening and taking in what he’s saying. 

“I know it all went wrong. Bakuto poisoned fighting for you, and a lot of things besides that. And I… I know that I made it worse, too, with what I did. But I don’t think that  _ Colleen _ and  _ fighting _ are mutually exclusive, now even now, and it never was before.” he continues. 

“It seems like every time I start fighting, something goes wrong. I started training  _ young _ , this was my everything for most of my life. But after Bakuto, after failing my  _ students _ , and Midland Circle… at that time, it made sense to stop.” She explains slowly. 

“And now?” he prompts after a moment, and she finally looks over at him.

“Now I don’t know  _ what _ to think of it all anymore.”

“Maybe you’ll decide to never fight again, or maybe you’ll take it up again. But honestly, I think you’re lying to yourself if you’re still trying to convince yourself that you  _ hate _ it,” he says plainly, and for once, the honesty is refreshing. Because he’s not  _ wrong _ , not really. 

“I remember when I was with my grandfather, what  _ he _ taught me. I remember the first time he let me hold my katana - his, at the time - and the first time I sparred. I  _ loved _ that. Sometimes I wonder if he’d be disappointed in me, now, for giving it all up.” she takes a sharp breath. “I’m descended from a line of samurai, that’s what he was training me to be. I kind of think I managed to stray as far from that as possible.” 

“I don’t know your grandfather, though from what you’ve told me about him I think I would’ve liked him-”

“You would’ve,” she interrupts, and he smiles. 

“But I don’t think he would’ve been disappointed in you. I don’t know how anyone  _ could _ be. Maybe you gave up fighting for the right reasons, or maybe you didn’t - I don’t really think that that’s the point. But you did recognize that it  _ wasn’t _ good for you, at that time in your life, and you hung up your sword. And as much as I teased you about it sometimes, really, you were a stronger person than I was. I could never have done that.”

“I guess when you put it like that, it makes more sense.”

“What I’m trying to get at here is… you can’t keep beating yourself about this forever, about whatever mistakes you made. You can’t keep focusing on all of the  _ bad _ in your history with fighting, because honestly, that’s kind of what you tend to do,” he says, giving her a  _ look _ , and she’d be annoyed but he’s right about that too. “What  _ I _ know is that you still light up when you’re sparring, and I don’t think that part of you is lost or gone forever.”

“Thank you,” she says, and leans her head to lay on his shoulder, not even pulling away when he wraps his arm around her and rests his head against hers. That sharp ache of sadness in her chest hurts a little less, now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okok one more chapter (wednesday) and THEN (sunday) accidental dog acquisition, which is imo, the best part


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short one

It’s been a while since she’s seen Misty, not since before Danny had gotten back, and he hadn’t seen her at all since he’d left so she’d figured that the reasonable thing to do was invite her over for lunch one day. Colleen isn’t the best at maintaining friendships, she  _ knows _ this, but thankfully Misty seems to get that and doesn’t mind her sometimes erratic ability to stay in touch. It all works out, and she arrives exactly when she’d said she would, coming into the apartment and not hesitating to join them in the kitchen. 

“Hey, Misty,” she greets, a little distracted finishing up the lunch, but Danny makes up for her lack of attention by stepping past to greet her. 

“Good to see you again, Danny,” Misty says as she accepts his quick hug. 

“Yeah, you too. We’re almost finished here, it took longer than we thought it would,” he explains, gesturing to the food they’ve been working on. 

Colleen takes a few plates over to the table, which is used so infrequently for actual eating that instead it’s mostly piled up with the notebooks and things from Danny’s information-seeking, or papers she’d been working on for the center. She shoves all of this to one end - Misty seems amused by this - until there’s enough room for their plates. 

She glances back over at Danny right as he tastes the soup, and he gives her a thumbs up when he notices that she’s looking at him.  _ Well, if he says it’s edible _ , she thinks with a slight sigh, though his judgement is usually right. She grabs the bowl of salad from the island and brings it over with the dressing, while Danny carefully moves the pot of soup over with an oven mitt to set it down on, as well as three bowls. 

“So how was Asia, Danny?” Misty asks after only a moment of silence while they’d gotten their food and started eating. Colleen is grateful for her for starting the conversation, something she’s never been good at herself. 

“I’m sure Asia is lovely, though really I didn’t see to see too much of it,” he explains, setting his spoon down. “At least, not too many of the nicer places. We weren’t really there to sightsee. I quickly became familiar with all of the shadier places, though,” he says with a slight laugh. He’d told her about a lot of the places they’d ended up looking for information, and  _ shady _ doesn’t even properly start to cover that topic. 

“Yeah, that sounds about right. You find what you were looking for, though? Colleen told me a little bit about  _ why _ you were there, about her ancestor.” 

“Well, I don’t really know yet. I found a lot, though maybe not everything we needed, but it was time to stop. Ward needed to get back before Rand fell apart, I needed to come  _ home _ … he trails off briefly. The unsaid words are clear enough, though. “I’ve got a lot of information still to sort through and piece together. Colleen and I have looked through some of it, but we’ve been taking a bit of a break the past couple of weeks.” 

“It’s kind of a headache,” Colleen adds. “I didn’t realize it would be  _ this _ difficult to figure out.” 

The conversation is interrupted by Danny’s phone ringing, which he quickly pulls out of his pocket to silence. Instead, he answers it. “It’s Ward,” he says as he pushes back his chair and gets up from the table, shooting them an “I’m sorry” look as he steps away.  

“Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” Misty asks as she leans forward just a little. “In private?” she adds in a lower tone, though Danny isn’t even paying attention anymore as he heads back into the bedroom to finish the call. 

“Sure, he might be a bit anyway, depending on what Ward’s calling for,” she says, a little apprehensive at the tone in Misty’s voice. 

“What’s going on with you two?” Misty asks, fixing her with a strong look of  _ don’t try lying to me _ . 

“ _ This _ is what you want to talk about?” 

“ _ Something _ is going on. You two have been looking at each other frequently when you think I’m not looking. There’s a picture of the two of you, I’m guessing on a date, smiling at each other  _ on your fridge _ . That wasn’t there last time I was here.”

_ Okay I see why she’s thinking this _ , Colleen sighs. 

“The bedroom door is open, and it looks like both sides are being used. Are you sharing a bed?”

“Look, it’s all… temporary, I guess,” she starts, pointedly ignoring the question about sharing a bed. “He was living in a hotel right when he got back, which is  _ stupid _ -”

“Does he not own an apartment anywhere?” Misty interrupts. 

“No, he just… always lived here. Pretty much since we met, actually. His job is in Chinatown, so I offered to let him stay here again while he gets back into…  _ normal _ , I guess.” She shrugs. “I mean, he’ll probably find someplace else at some point, but right now this has been what’s working best.” 

“I just didn’t expect it, that’s all. With everything that happened, the way you reacted to that, I didn’t really think that you’d be willing to let him stay here again.” She pauses, looking over at the bedroom, where Danny is still on the phone. “Are you doing okay?” 

“Yeah, I am. It’s weird, and it’s not been  _ easy _ , but I am glad that he’s back now. Still figuring out how to deal with that,” she explains, stopping when she notices that Danny is heading over again, phone back in his pocket. 

“Sorry about that. Where were we?” he asks as he sits down, and it’s easy to slip back into comfortable conversation for the rest of the lunch, pushing back the apprehension from Misty’s questioning. Danny manages to get laughs out of both of them telling them dumb stories about the shit he and Ward had ended up in while traveling, and it’s  _ good _ . 

When they finish up, since Misty has to go, there’s a quick round of goodbyes before Colleen puts her attention to cleaning up as Danny walks over to the door with Misty. 

“Hey, Misty,” Danny says, his voice quieter than normal as he steps closer to her near the door. “Thanks for just… sticking with Colleen while I was gone, checking in on her. I’m glad she had someone.” 

She thinks, now, that this maybe wasn’t something that she was meant to hear. 

“Wasn’t a problem, I like her. Just don’t pull shit like that again, yeah?” Misty replies, but there’s nothing unkind in her voice. 

“Don’t intend to. See you, Misty.” He shuts the door behind her, turning back to Colleen and smiling a little before joining her to help clean up the dishes. 

They had a routine with the dishes before he’d left, and had picked it up again without even really thinking about it. They’d switched up every week who washed the dishes and who dried them, and this week it was Danny’s turn to wash. She spreads out a towel on the counter beside the sink and takes the dishes as he passes them to her, taking comfort in the familiarity of the whole situation, laughing when Danny ends up flicking soapy water at her and laughing at his protesting when she throws the damp rag back at him in retaliation. 

_ This is good _ . 

_ I’m glad he’s back _ . 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dog stuff is next and it's adorable i promise


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> accidental dog acquisition time

When Colleen hears the door open later than usual in the evening, she doesn’t really think anything of it, knowing that it’s just Danny. Instead she keeps her attention on the computer and her work, deciding against getting up even though he’s being suspiciously quiet so far for just getting home. It’s unusual.

“Hey, Colleen?” he calls suddenly, which wouldn’t  _ normally _ be concerning, except for his specific tone - almost reluctant, sounding like he’s almost guilty. Never a good thing. Cautiously, she sets her computer aside, debating whether or not she actually wants to know what’s going on. When the seconds tick past without another word from him, she’s can’t really ignore the worry that kicks in. 

“Can you come here a minute?” he asks, then, after an uncomfortably long pause. “Don’t yell at me,” he adds after a second’s hesitation, and Colleen strongly considers  _ not _ going because she’s even more sure now that she doesn’t want to know what’s going on. This entire thing so far is concerning, and she waits a moment longer. 

“Coming,” she finally answers, pushing a few papers out of the way so she can get up. She heads out into the main room only to stop the moment she sees him, opening her mouth to say something only to not have the words to even start. 

He’s sitting by the door with a somehow both guilty and happy look on his face, and he’s very carefully restraining a  _ dog _ . It’s medium-large in size, and clearly a stray - it’s got matted fur and is definitely too skinny, and after a second she notices that there’s dried blood on its front let. It’s shaking a little, and Danny is just gently petting it with his free hand while still keeping his hold firm. 

“I… Danny… what?” She asks for lack of a better way to articulate the rush of confusion at the whole situation.  _ This really shouldn’t be surprising _ , she thinks, shaking her head a little as she takes another step forward. 

“Okay, well… I was coming home from work when I found him in one of the alleys. I mean,  _ look _ at him Colleen - he’s not doing good. And it’s cold, and wet, and I couldn’t just  _ leave _ him.” Danny explains, still carefully keeping the dog as still as he can. “Look, I know, I probably should’ve called first and asked if this was okay, but it was getting dark and I wasn’t really thinking about it.” He has a guilty sort of look that seems more like his puppy dog expression (which he denies he has) than anything actually resembling guilt. He’s clearly excited about this dog. 

“No, it’s…  _ okay _ , I just wasn’t expecting it. At all. We can at least hold onto him for tonight, though,” she says, looking down at the dog again. “I’m not really sure where we can keep him,” she adds. Hesitantly, she crouches down in front of the dog and reaches out one hand. She’s careful to stay still and not look him in the eye as she lets him sniff her hand a little curiously, a little cautiously. He doesn’t  _ seem _ like the aggressive type, but she could easily be wrong. 

“Can you hold on to him for a second? I’m going to grab a towel and see if I can dry him off a little,” he explains, and when she nods he waits until she gently puts an arm around the dog before he releases him. She shifts closer to get a better hold on him, and she hates that she can feel exactly how skinny he is. He’s still shaking a bit, from cold or fear she’s not really sure.  _ Poor thing _ . 

When Danny returns with a towel she moves out of the way to let him carefully dry the dog off a little, which doesn’t help as much as she expected. His fur, which she guesses would normally be long and fluffy, is tangled and dirty and dull, clearly in need of some attention and work. 

“Really, where are we going to keep him for tonight?” She asks as he sits back down on the floor to gently restraint the dog again. The apartment isn’t really set up for a dog, especially not an unpredictable one, and she knows the main room is out of the question. When the dog briefly tries to pull out of Danny’s grip she drapes her arm over the dog’s shoulders again too and pets him until he calms down again. The wonders if she’s got anything in the apartment that could serve as a leash temporarily, though nothing immediately comes to mind. 

“Well, if we put a few things away he’s probably be okay in the bathroom? It’s small and there’s not really anything he could hurt in there, or that could hurt him,” Danny suggests. 

“Okay.”  _ This is not how I thought my evening would go _ , she thinks, looking at the dog. 

“He needs to eat though, and could probably use a bath,” he says, his full attention still on the dog, still  _ clearly _ thrilled about this. “So, uh, if you wouldn’t mind watching him for a little bit, I was thinking I could run to the store real quick and get a few things?” He looks guilty suggesting this, but she just nods. 

“You know, a shelter would take care of all of those things if it’s the plan to drop him off at one tomorrow,” she points out. “We can feed him, absolutely, but anything else isn’t really necessary.”

“I know, but I’d rather do a little more to help if I can. I’ll need to look at his leg, too. It doesn’t look good, but he hasn’t let me get a better look at it.” 

“Okay. I can handle him for a bit, if we get him into the bedroom. The rest of the apartment really isn’t dog proofed.” she agrees after a minute.  _ How in the hell is this my life _ , she wonders, before standing up. 

She trails behind as Danny gently encourages the dog to walk towards the bedroom, never releasing his careful hold even when the dog briefly tries to scramble away. After a minute he gets him in, and she quickly follows and slides the door shut behind them. As soon as it’s closed Danny releases him, and the dog immediately bolts for the far end of the room near the door to the deck, crouching down and pressing himself against the floor. 

“How did you manage to catch him, anyway?” Colleen asks, because the dog seems particularly skittish, and not like he’d be easy to catch even if his injury slowed him down a little. 

“Used my chi to calm him,” he replies distractedly as he trades out his coat from work for one of his other, warmer ones. “He did try to run a couple of times, but thankfully he wasn’t too far from the apartment, anyway.”

She watches as the dog lays down pressed up against the wall, watching them cautiously. He’s cute, she can’t really deny that, and she can’t help but wonder how long he’d been wandering the streets. Going by how thin he is, it must’ve been a while. 

“I'm going to go now. I'll be back as quick as possible,” Danny says before leaving, sliding the door shut behind him, and leaving her with the dog.  _ Great _ . 

For a moment she just watches him, standing near the door and not approaching him. He seems stressed out enough, and she doesn’t want to make that worse. Instead she leaves the room, heading into the kitchen to grab a bowl from the cabinet. After filling it with water she returns to the bedroom, heading towards the dog until she’s several feet away. He growls a little, low and quiet, and it’s more of a pitiful sort of sound than anything threatening, so she doesn’t hesitate to reach down and set the water bowl in front of him. 

After that she retreats to sit on the bed again, grabbing her laptop and putting her attention halfway back to that. She figures that ignoring the dog will likely make him more comfortable than hovering and trying to do anything, but she finds herself looking over at him anyway. At a healthy weight he’s definitely a medium-large dog, good sized even now. His fur is a mix of brown and black with a white stripe up his face, on his chest, and the tip of his tail. He also has the cutest floppy ears paired with soft brown eyes that look a little bit pitiful as he watches her. With a little work and some weight back, he’s likely a very pretty dog. 

She considers it a little victory when the dog moves forward a few steps to get closer to the bowl, sniffing curiously before starting to drink, moving even closer as he does. She watches as he settles himself in front of the bowl, clearly very thirsty, because he stays there for several minutes until the bowl is nearly empty. 

Giving up on trying to get any work done, Colleen slowly moves to sit on the floor at the end of the bed instead, holding one hand out towards him in invitation. She looks down at her lap rather than at him, still keeping her hand outstretched. In the corner of her eye she sees him stand up, taking a couple of slow, cautious limping steps towards her. She considers it another little victory when he sniffs her hand and then decides to take another step closer, and she gently touches the side of his neck to see if he’s okay with that. He seems to be since he doesn’t run away, just lets her gently run the tips of her fingers along his neck and shoulder, slow and careful, in a circling sort of motion. 

He sits down right there  _ just _ within her reach, so she continues to gently pet him until he seems to relax a little. She’s certain he’s belonged to someone at some point, because despite his initial fear, he doesn’t seem like a dog that’s never had a home. It’s just clearly been a while since he  _ has _ . If she has to guess she figures he’s still somewhat young, though definitely not a puppy. 

When he moves to scoot back and lay down out of her reach, she pulls her hand back and instead grabs her phone to check her emails, and to see if Danny has texted her. She’s not going to push it, just the fact that he’s sitting reasonably close to her is a good enough sign. He’s not shaking anymore, either. He rests his chin on his paws and watches her, and  _ damn why is he so cute? _ She wonders, having a hard time paying attention to anything else. 

She’s never really been a big animal person - she likes them well enough, and can see the appeal of having a pet, but she’s never owned one. But this stray with his soft brown eyes is more than enough to tug at her heartstrings, and she wishes she knew the story behind him. 

She sits like that quietly, her attention mostly on him and partly on the emails she’s meant to be reading, until Danny gets back. She hears the door open and the dog immediately sits up, growling a little again and looking like he’s prepared to bolt at a moment’s notice. 

“Slow, Danny,” she calls when he starts opening the door. He does as she says, easing the door open before slipping inside, staying back when he takes in the dog’s halfway fearful body language. 

“How’s he doing?” Danny asks as he carefully sets the plastic bags down on the dresser. 

“I got him to drink some water, and he’s mostly been laying down. He’s sweet, once he relaxes,” Colleen explains, taking one last look at the dog before she stands up and joins Danny. 

“I got some food, some shampoo to bathe him, and one of those leashes that can be a collar too. I’d like to get a look at his leg, but I say we feed him first,” he says, pulling everything out of the bags. While he gets a bowl from the kitchen, Colleen opens up the bag of food, which makes the dog perk up and take a couple of curious steps closer before he stops again. 

“You’ll like this, I promise,” she assures him, unable to resist smiling just a little as he sits and then looks up at her, one ear flopped up over his head.  _ Adorable _ . 

Danny pours some out and sets the bowl down, pushing it over to the dog, who immediately seems to forget any prior fear he had and steps even closer to them to start eating. For a minute his entire focus is on the food, not even seeming to remember that they’re standing right next to him. 

“Poor thing,” Colleen says softly as she watches him. When she looks over at Danny he’s giving her a knowing  _ look _ . “What?” 

“I knew you’d like him. You always have a soft spot for the strays,” Danny says, smiling. 

“Shut up,” she replies, but there’s no heat in her words. He’s  _ right _ . 

Danny just laughs before looking back at the dog, who has finally slowed down his eating to a more realistic pace. 

“Do you think he’ll cooperate for a bath?” He asks, grabbing the small bottle of shampoo he’d gotten. 

“One way to find out,” she replies, shrugging, as she sits back down on the floor next to the dog. He seems much more content now, and far more relaxed, seeming to realize now that they’re not actually trying to hurt him. He even lets her pet his head gently as he continues eating. 

“I’m going to run a little water in the tub and then see if we can get him in there,” Danny says. “Mayve see if he’s okay with having the leash on? That might make it easier to hold him.” He hands Colleen the leash before heading into the bedroom, and she doesn’t get up just, just sits next to the dog as he finishes eating. He’s laying down again now, right in front of her, so she reaches out and pets him again. 

“We’re going to get you cleaned up,” she tells him, as she holds the leash out for him to sniff. He doesn’t seem alarmed by it, even as she opens up the loop at the end to gently pull it over his head. For a moment he tenses, looking up at her, but relaxes when she finishes and adjusts the loop so that it’s comfortable around his neck. 

“Okay, ready for him,” Danny says as he steps out of the bathroom. He takes the end of the leash and gives it the slightest pull, and the dog gets to his feet without hesitation, apparently used to it. All the more evidence that he’s had some training. He does pull back against it at first, before taking a few limping steps to join Danny at the door to the bathroom, where he stops again and just pokes his head in. Colleen follows as she slowly encourages the dog to step in, giving him a slight push. 

“I’ve never actually given a dog a bath,” Danny says as he gets the dog closer to the tub. “I could look it up, but it seems straightforward enough.” 

“Neither have I, so don’t look to me for advice,” she replies, hovering back by the door, not actually sure if she wants to get involved yet. Danny just shrugs, looking at the tub and then back at the dog before bending down to carefully pick him up, which he mostly tolerates with just a little bit of kicking. The second his feet hit the water he barks, trying to scramble out, kicking water up all over Danny. He just wraps an arm around the dog, shushing him gently, and she watches curiously as the dog slowly relaxes against him while Danny talks softly and strokes his head and shoulders.  _ “I calmed him with my chi,” _ she remembers him saying.  _ That’s useful _ . 

“Easy, it’s okay, it’s just water,” he says, as if the dog actually understands him, though he’s much quieter now and no longer struggling. 

“Uh, would you come hold onto him or something? Or try and get him wet?” 

Colleen doesn’t reply, just walks over to join Danny at the tub, kneeling down on the floor beside him and reaching over to grab hold of the leash. She keeps the dog still while Danny grabs an empty up and uses that to pour water over his back, thoroughly soaking his fur, which the dog doesn’t seem at all happy about. He’s tense and pulling at the leash, but Colleen just keeps her hold firm and pets his head as a distraction. It works, more or less. 

When Danny puts some of the shampoo on his back and starts to carefully scrub, the dog seems even more unhappy, moving as far away from Danny as he can, though the shower is small enough that Danny can still easily reach him. He just takes it in stride, ending up pressed against her side as he continues to scrub until the dog is completely covered in soap except for his head. 

“Maybe rinse him off before doing his head?” Colleen suggests, shifting over a little so Danny has more room, gripping the dog’s leash tighter when he growls a little in Danny’s direction. 

He nods, grabbing the cup again and starting to rinse him off with the water that’s already in the tub, which the dog deals with well enough. When that water becomes too soapy, he turns the faucet on, the sound filling up the whole room. That’s, of course, when it all goes wrong. The moment it’s on the dog tugs away from Colleen’s hold quickly and scrambles past her out of the tub, despite her’s and Danny’s attempts to grab him. Soapy, dirty water is kicked up all over the both of them, the floor, and on parts of the walls. 

Colleen sits back on her heels, wiping soapy water out of her face. “This is your fault,” she points out after a moment of tired silence, though she’s not actually mad, not moving yet despite knowing that they really should go after him. 

“One hundred percent,” he agrees. “I’m going to go grab him.” He gets up with a sigh, stepping past her to go get him.  _ We should’ve shut the bathroom door, _ she thinks as she stands up,  _ at least the bedroom door is shut _ . 

The dog is pressed up against the wall dripping soapy water onto the floor, growling when Danny reaches over to grab the leash. When he doesn’t budge as Danny tries to get him to follow, he just sighs again before opting to pick him up instead. She steps out of the way as he carries him back in, pulling the door shut behind her as she grabs his leash while Danny settles him back into the tub. 

She keeps her hold more firm than before as Danny makes quick work of rinsing him off and washing his head and ears carefully. At this point all three of them are soaked, her clothes clinging to her from all of the dirty water, and there’s way more of a mess to clean than she’d been wanting. 

When Danny grabs the leash, she gets two towels from the cabinet and hands one to him. She starts gently trying off the dog’s head before moving to his neck and chest, while Danny works on his back. Thankfully he holds still for this, and he’s mostly dry in just a few minutes. 

“I’ll clean up, if you hold onto him,” Danny offers with a bit of an apologetic look, passing her the leash when she nods. 

The dog settles back down to eat some more when she drops the leash, so she sits back down on the floor near him while he calms down. He looks a lot better now that he’s been washed, though there’s still some matting that will need to be worked out.  _ Not tonight, though _ , she decides, unable to resist reaching over to pet his head again. 

He lays down with his head resting by her outstretched hand, so she takes the opportunity to continue petting him, and also to get a look at his leg. She can’t see it too well, but most of the dried blood has been washed off, and it looks like there’s a fairly large cut on the side. It’s not bleeding anymore though, so she’s not sure if they should try to wrap it or let the shelter handle it. 

When Danny finishes up, he comes and sits down across from her, just within reach of the dog, who gives him a halfway wary look before he settles fully down again. There’s a soft smile on Danny’s face as he starts petting the dog.

“His leg doesn’t look bad enough to need to be wrapped tonight, and we’ve stressed him out enough as it is. I think we should leave it,” Colleen says after a minute of silence. 

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. We can get a better look at it tomorrow.” 

There’s a comfortable silence as Danny continues petting the dog, who looks like he’s nearly dozing off now, laying at her side. His ears are flopped over, one down correctly and the other up over his head, and she can’t resist reaching out to pet them, which he seems to like because he moves his head even closer to her.  _ He’s too sweet to be a stray _ , she decides. Surely there’s  _ someone _ out there looking for this dog, because she can’t imagine that he didn’t at least fairly recently have a home. He’s been lost long enough to become underfed, but not enough to lose his sweeter side. 

After a minute Danny gets up again, grabbing the food bowl and adding more before moving it and the water bowl into the bathroom. Reluctantly Colleen gets up to help him lay out a few towels, before they both go about their general night routine of brushing teeth and - this time - changing out of wet clothes. The whole time the dog just lays on the floor at the end of the bed, half asleep, clearly much more comfortable now. 

She sits back down with him while Danny finishes putting a few things away in the bathroom to dog proof it for the night, and she’s pleased when he doesn’t even move as she sits right next to him. She gently works at a couple of the tangles in his fur that she can reach, making a mental note to pick up a brush of some sort to work at it tomorrow.  _ He won’t be here tomorrow _ , she reminds herself, wonders how she forgot that so quickly. 

Danny comes out and leads the dog back into the bathroom, slipping the leash off of his head before pulling the door shut. For a moment she can hear the dog pushing at the door, sees the shadow of his nose along the bottom of it before he goes quiet. 

“You’re frowning,” Danny points out, and she looks up at him. “Something wrong?”

“No,” she starts, only to hesitate. “Are we sure we’re going to take him to a shelter?” 

“We could always hold onto him for a few days while looking for his owner. It might be less stressful for him than a shelter,” Danny suggests. 

“Okay,” she agrees. 

“We can figure it out in the morning.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> colleen: danny why  
> colleen 2 seconds later: i love this dog


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more fluff tbh

She wakes to the sound of Danny getting up, and she groans slightly as the bed moves and tugs the blankets up further around herself. She’s not really awake yet, drifting in that strange between of waking and sleeping, and the noise Danny is making sounds far away. She is aware of the fact that it’s  _ cold _ , and for a moment she considers shifting over into the warm area that Danny had left, before deciding  _ why wouldn’t she _ and moves over. A very traitorous part of her brain wishes that he were still in bed so that she could curl up against him, because he’s always warm. She pointedly ignores that. 

The warmth of Danny’s place is enough to keep her dozing off, until she hears a loud  _ bark _ . And that when it all comes rushing back, all the things her sleep-foggy brain had managed to forget until just now.  _ The dog _ . 

She’s not sure what time it is, but going by how it’s barely light in the bedroom so far when she finally forces herself to open her eyes, it’s still early. Slowly, she sits up, pushes the blankets back, the rush of cold against her skin motivating her to immediately get up and find the nearest warm thing to put on, which happens to be one of Danny’s hoodies.  _ Go figure _ . Still, she only hesitates for a moment before tugging it on, approaching the bathroom door, which is already cracked open. 

When she opens the door she sees Danny sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, the dog laying down at his side, clearly over whatever had caused him to bark earlier. If there had been any mess in the room, he had already cleaned it up, and the only evidence of their canine guest are the towels spread out on the floor and the bowl of food. Danny is clearly thrilled as he pets the dog, looking up at her with a grin as she fully enters the room. 

“I think he likes me now.”

“I can see that.” She hovers for just a moment before moving to sit down on the floor on the other side of the dog, unable to resist running her hand over his silky-soft ears. He’s looking up at them with those pitiful, adorable brown eyes, clearly content. 

“I think we should take him in to a vet,” Danny suggests, still absentmindedly petting the dog. “I don’t  _ really _ want to take him to a shelter yet.” 

“They can check for a microchip, anyway, and look at his leg, so it’s not a bad idea,” she agrees, because she doesn’t want to take him to a shelter either. Once he’d gotten over his initial skittishness, he’s not exactly been  _ difficult _ to deal with. 

“Well, it’s Saturday, I’m not working, we might be able to get him in this morning.” He pulls out his phone, presumably to actually  _ find _ a vet in the area, while Colleen continues to pet the dog. It’s hard  _ not _ to, because while his fur is still tangled or matted in some places, it’s  _ soft _ . 

“We should stop and pick up a brush on the way home, his coat needs some help.” 

“Actually, I got one last night, it should be in the bag. On the dresser, I think?” Danny replies, not looking up from his phone. “Also, I found a vet. It’s pretty close, I’m going to call and see if they take walk-in appointments.” 

“Okay.” Colleen stands up, secretly pleased when the dog does as well, tentatively following her as she leaves the bathroom. The bag is exactly where Danny had said it was, so she grabs the brush and sits down on the floor, folding her legs under her as she beckons the dog over. After a minute curiosity seems to get the better of him and he wanders over to her slowly, pushing his nose against her knees before sniffing at her face and giving her the slightest wet-tongue-kiss on her cheek. She smiles, petting his head again before letting him sniff at the brush, which he apparently decides is nothing to worry about, and lays down on the floor in front of her.  _ Why is he so cute _ ? 

He gives her a wary sort of look when she first starts brushing him, before he just stretches out fully on his side, mostly relaxed as she works the brush through the tangles that she can. Some of it takes a bit of gentle work with her fingers before brushing through it, but most of it goes smoothly, and he’s looking much better by the time Danny joins them. 

“They do take walk ins,” he says, standing in the doorway watching, giving her that same  _ look _ that he had last night when commenting about her love for strays. “It’s close enough that he should be able to make the walk. If not, I can probably just carry him. I’m going to change, and when you’re ready, we can leave?” 

“Sounds good.” She puts her attention back to working out some of the worst tangles while Danny changes, and by the time he’s done it’s looking  _ almost _ like he never had the messy coat. There’s still work that needs to be done on it, more on his belly, but that can wait until after the vet. 

When Danny is done, she leaves him with the dog before grabbing clothes to change into and retreating into the bathroom. She makes quick work of brushing her teeth and hair and putting on some warmer clothes before joining Danny again, reaching for her shoes. He’s already gotten the leash on the dog, who is patiently sitting at his side. She grabs the temporarily discarded hoodie and starts to tug it back on. 

“So, do I not get my hoodie back?” Danny asks, but when she looks over at him his eyes are teasing and he’s smiling brightly. She hates that he’s still the same adorable person as  _ before _ , because looking at him now, it makes her want to kiss him. Which she’s very much  _ not _ supposed to be doing. 

She makes a show of hesitating before pulling the hoodie fully on. “Nope.” 

He just laughs before heading out for the door, pace slower than normal to make sure the dog can keep up with him comfortably with his bad leg. She trails behind them, locking the door, following them as Danny carries the dog down the stairs - which he seems very unhappy about - but he seems to relax once they’re outside, even wagging his tail a little. 

“Lead the way,” she says after pushing the metal door shut. 

“It’s not far,” he assures her again before he starts walking, the dog keeping up with him fairly well considering his limp. She follows behind until she notices that he’s wary when people on the sidewalk move too close past him, that he shies away from them, so she hurries to walk along the other side of the dog instead so he has a barrier from the strangers on the street.  _ Hopefully this helps _ , she thinks. 

As he’d said, it’s not a long walk, and she’s grateful to get out of the cold and into the lobby of the vet clinic. It’s noisy inside, a mess of people talking and dogs barking and a cat meowing from the confines of it’s carrier. There’s several people waiting on the benches along the walls, carefully holding onto their dogs. As soon as he steps in, the dog growls a little and presses himself up against Colleen’s legs as he watches the other dogs warily. 

“Hey, how about I take him over there while you… fill out forms or something?” Colleen suggests, gesturing to the unoccupied corne ron the other side of the room where there’s a small cushioned bench next to a rack displaying various kinds of dog food. 

“Good plan. I don’t think he likes the other dogs,” he comments, passing her the leash. 

She carefully walks him across the room, sitting down on the bench, the dog settling against her legs as she pets his ears until he relaxes, resting his chin on her knee. “You’ll be fine,” she tells him, continuing to stroke his ears. “You don’t like the other dogs, do you?” she asks, even though she knows she won’t get an answer. She figures it’s  _ probably _ because any dogs he had come across as a stray might not have been friendly. 

Danny joins her a minute later with a clipboard and a pen, frowning down at the form. “I don’t know what to put down for half of this,” he says as he sits down next to her, pressed against her side on the small bench.  

She leans over to watch as he fills out the first part of the information,  _ almost _ smiles at the fact that he doesn’t even think before he fills it out under both of their names, as well as both of their contact information, which does make sense. 

“Name?” he asks, pen hovering just over that line. 

“I don’t know, just, put it down as  _ stray _ or something.” 

“We know nothing about his medical history,” he comments, “I’ll just put it down as unknown.” 

“That works. We’ll get to explain, anyway, so it’s fine.” she looks back at the dog as he finally pulls away from her legs a bit, laying down on the floor instead and settling his head on his paws. He tenses up briefly when a dog across the room starts barking, letting out a low growl, though he doesn’t move. 

“Should I sign it, or you?”

“You filled it out, you sign it,” she replies.  

He quickly scribbles out a messy signature before taking the form back up to the desk, and points to a couple parts on the paper she thinks to explain, before he returns. “I guess we just wait now.” 

Thankfully it’s not too long before they’re called back, which Colleen is relieved about because the dog is clearly not happy in the lobby. They’re led back into a small room with a table in the middle which when prompted, Danny carefully lifts the dog up onto. He whines, briefly, before they coax him to lay down and he reluctantly settles. 

“So he’s a stray?” the vet tech asks, looking down at the form before approaching the table. 

“Yeah, we know nothing about him,” Colleen explains, stepping back up out of the way but not releasing her grip on the leash. 

“Well, just from looking at him, I’d definitely say he’s a german shepherd mix, he has that look to him and his coat really looks like one.” She pauses. “Maybe mixed with a collie of some sort? His face looks like a border collie’s, and the white markings aren’t usual with shepherds. A test could determine that for sure, but it’s not necessary.” 

She gently pets the dog’s face before carefully looking into his mouth, which after a small whine, the dog tolerates for a minute. “He’s not a puppy. He’s got all of his adult teeth. I wouldn’t say he’s very old either, maybe around three years.” 

“Oh good, he’s not getting any bigger then,” Danny says. “Can you weigh him? He’s pretty heavy, but underweight right now for sure.”

“I will. I’ll check for a microchip first, then I’d like to get a look at his leg,” she says. “He didn’t have a collar on?”

“Nope, nothing. I found him in an alley,” he explains. 

“He calmed down a lot once we got him home, and even let us bathe him. He’s definitely been someone’s pet before,” Colleen adds. 

“Well, no microchip,” she says, setting the scanner down. “Are you planning to take him into a shelter?”

Colleen glances over at Danny as he frowns a little, but nods. “Probably.” 

She doesn’t respond, her attention now on the dog’s leg, which he lets her look at without much trouble. She cleans it up a little to get a better look at it, but she doesn’t  _ seem _ too concerned about it as she goes over it. 

“I’ll weigh him real quick, then take him back and get this cleaned up better and bandaged. It’s not as bad as it looks, it’s not going to need stitches. We’ll just put him on some medicine for infection.” 

“Okay.” 

Danny lifts the dog off of the table and sets him over on the scale when instructed, leaning over to look at the numbers on the screen. “Forty-eight pounds? When he’s at a better weight how much to you think he’ll weigh?” 

“Best guess, upper fifties to low sixties. That’s entirely possible with a shepherd mix.” she takes the leash from Colleen, helping the dog off of the scale. “I’ll be back with him shortly. If you don’t mind waiting in the lobby, I can bring him out to you when we’re finished.”

She trails after Danny as they head back into the main room, sitting back down on the small bench. “So, what are we going to do with him? I know a shelter would take him, that’d probably be the easiest option, but…” 

“Well, maybe we could at least hold into him for a week or so? We can make some flyers, or something, and just see if we can find his owner before we decide to take him to a shelter. If other dogs really do stress him out, maybe this would be easier on him,” Danny suggests, and there’s a hopeful sort of look in his eyes as he speaks. “If you don’t mind having a dog in the apartment,” he adds quickly. 

“I don’t mind. I’d like to wait an the shelter if possible, too. I’m sure there’s also places online to post about found dogs, and that might help as well. We’ll have to pick up a few things for him though, and maybe try to dog proof the apartment a little bit/” 

“We can get some pictures of him later and make up a flyer,” he says. “With a face like that, it shouldn’t be hard to get some cute ones of him.” 

“He’s pretty adorable,” she agrees, and Danny laughs. 

“I can’t  _ believe _ you’ve never had a dog before, Colleen. We’ve had this dog with us for less than a day and you’re already in love,” he points out, and she just looks away, hiding a smile, wishing that she could deny it but she really  _ can’t _ . The dog is adorable and she’s very quickly growing fond of him. 

“I never said I  _ didn’t _ like dogs, I’ve just never had one.”

“ _ And _ he’s a stray. This is just the perfect combination - you have a habit of finding and taking in the strays. God, if left alone, you’d probably be that person who has a several dogs and cats that you just found on the street and then kept,” he laughs. 

“No, I wouldn’t,” she argues, but he just gives her that  _ look _ again. “Okay, it’s  _ possible _ . Let’s not test that theory, though.” 

“Fair enough,” he agrees, and she smiles. “Hey, once we find this dog’s owner, we should get another dog. We could get one from the shelter, it would be fun.” 

“Maybe.” She looks away quickly, turning her attention to the floor and  _ not _ at Danny, a little thrown off by the  _ we _ . The way that he says it as if that’s normal, as if their current  _ situation _ is normal, as if going and getting a dog together wouldn’t be weird.  _ ‘We’ sounds nice though _ , she thinks. 

She’s saved from having to think about it too much by the vet tech bringing the dog back out, and she pushes up from her seat quickly to take the leash from her. He has a clean white bandage wrapped around his leg now, and he’s already looking a little better than he did before. His tails wags a little as he stands in front of Colleen. 

“Here’s a copy of the paperwork that details what we did, you can give it to the shelter when you take him in. We also clipped out some of those worse matts in his coat,” she explains, handing the folder over to Danny along with a bottle of medicine and set of oral syringes. “And here’s the medicine. It’s marked on the side what to give him, and when.” 

“Thank you.” 

“Hey, I’m going to go ahead and step outside with him,” she says, briefly touching Danny’s arm to get his attention before she readjusts her hold on the dog’s leash and heads for the door. He seems as eager to get away from the noisy, sharp-cleaner-smelling room as she is, the fresh air welcoming despite the cold. She leans back against the wall a few steps away from the door, just taking a moment to breathe while Danny finishes up inside. 

_ Why does this have to be so damn complicated _ , she wonders. What they had had never really been  _ simple _ or  _ easy _ , but at least before every interaction didn’t feel like they were pushing and testing the boundaries of what was okay or what was allowed. It’s all strange and this newfound sort of comfort she has with him again feels like it could go somewhere it’s not meant to, and she really doesn’t want to think about that

“Ready to go?” Danny asks as he steps out to join them, and she musters up a fake sort of smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. 

“Yeah.” 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's just fluff

Danny had gotten home far earlier than normal due to bad weather and had pretty much immediately turned his full attention to the dog. Over the past couple of days he’d warmed up to them significantly, to the point where he would greet them excitedly whenever he or Colleen got home. He was behaving near perfectly, the only real messes being the toys they’d gotten him that he’d gotten all over the floor. He’s already limping less due to the medicine, and eating a lot. Overall, he’d hardly been difficult to deal with and was fun to have around. 

“We should work on your flyer today,” he tells the dog, who doesn’t even look up at him, his whole attention still on the toy he’s currently chewing on. 

He turns a little at the sound of the door opening, while the dog lets out a loud bark and stands up, though quiets the moment Colleen steps in. The first thing that Danny notices is that she looks  _ tired _ , the kind of tired that nothing can hide, and the second is that even when the dog trots over to greet her she barely acknowledges him, giving him just a quick pat on the head before pushing past him.  _ That’s _ not normal, she’s very excited to see him whenever she gets home. 

“Hey, Colleen,” he calls over, and she looks over just briefly with the slightest attempt at a smile before heading off into the bedroom without a word. 

He considers following her before deciding that  _ no _ , that would likely just frustrate her if she  _ is _ having a rough day, so he just stays where he is and lures the dog back over to him by offering a treat. He’d been making great progress on learning  _ sit _ , and as Danny had quickly found out, the dog is  _ very _ treat motivated. He comes running at the sound of the bag opening, and will do pretty much anything to get one. It’s adorable. 

When Colleen does come back out into the main room after changing clothes she looks a little bit more okay, though still tired. She makes a brief stop in the kitchen for water before joining him, sitting down on the sofa and reaching over to pet the dog more thoroughly when he runs over to her, tail wagging. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, because he can’t  _ not _ ask, that’s not him. He worries about her, sometimes, especially on days like this. 

“Yeah, sorry. It’s just been a long, kind of shitty day,” she sighs. “And I’d rather not explain. Why are you home already?” 

Albert decided to postpone our last job because of the weather, it’s been a miserable sort of day to work outside. So I’ve just been hanging out with the dog. We went out for a quick walk,” he says. 

“That’s good.” She reaches over to grab one of the blankets that’s folded at the other end of the sofa, quickly wrapping herself up in it and tucking her legs up to her chest, seeming like she’s trying to make herself as small as possible. “Maybe we should try and get some good pictures of him for a flyer and stuff, now that he’s looking a bit better,” she suggests. 

“That’s what I was thinking, we can in a little bit. It’s playtime right now,” he says, and she just smiles a little, and it’s  _ real _ this time. He reaches over to grab the other end of the tug toy that the dog is currently chewing on, which prompts him to quickly get to his feet to pull on his end excitedly. Danny moves into a better position before he tugs, waving his arm side to side in a half hearted attempt to get the toy free. The dog has a surprisingly strong grip, and is never all that eager to release any of the toys when he’s excited, not even for a treat. 

Eventually Danny ends up laying on the floor next to the dog after he successfully takes the toy, and he puts his paws over both ends and rests his head on it. 

“I wonder what his name was,” he says suddenly as soon as the thought comes to him, looking briefly up at Colleen, who has somehow managed to wrap herself up even more in the blanket. 

“We will probably never know until we find his owner.” 

“Hm.” He reaches for his phone and pulls up the browser, quickly googling  _ common dog names _ .  _ It’s worth trying _ , he decides, taking another quick glance up at Colleen, who still looks tired and  _ off _ and not all that happy. He doesn’t like seeing her like this, never has, and wishes he could do something to make her feel better. 

“I found a list of names, maybe he’ll respond to one of them,” he says, scrolling down the list. 

“Worth a shot.” 

“Max,” he starts after going back to the top of the list, but the dog doesn’t even so much as  _ blink _ at the name. 

“Buddy?” Nothing. “Charlie?” He doesn’t respond to that either, just continues chewing on his toy, oblivious. 

He tries several others - Duke, Bear, Jack, among others - though nothing catches the dog’s attention. 

“Maybe something less common? It’s possible his owner actually bothered to come up with something more original,” Colleen suggests when Danny finishes going through the first list with no success. 

“Fluffy.” That gets no response from the dog, though Colleen half laughs at that one. 

“That’s not really original either,” she points out. She’s  _ smiling _ a little though, and now he has an idea of how to maybe cheer her up a little, and can’t resist. 

“You’re right, that ridiculous. How about Cuddlefloof.” 

“Danny,  _ no _ ,” she starts, but he can tell she’s trying not to laugh. 

“I think it would be a very appropriate name for him,” he says in the most serious voice he can muster while trying not to laugh himself, because it  _ is _ a stupid name. “Maybe Ted?” 

“Somehow, that’s even worse than Cuddlefloof,” Colleen says after a considering moment. 

“We could just shorten it to Floof,” he suggests, and she tries to hide the fact that she’s smiling by pulling the blanket up around her more, but he  _ knows _ . 

“That’s not any better than Fluffy. Have you ever named a pet before?” 

“No, but neither have you. This is new territory, Colleen,” he explains in a serious voice, and she’s smiling again. “Okay, what would you actually name a dog?” 

She takes a quiet minute to think before she just shrugs. “I don’t really know. It’s not something I’ve ever thought about. Probably something Japanese though?” She says it more like a question. 

“Oh, that’s a good idea, actually. When we get a dog we can give him a Japanese name. You can pick it out.” He smiles. 

“We can pick one together,” she counters, again trying to hide her smile but he doesn’t even bother trying. He feels warm and happy and she’s ducked her head down a little to hide her face and he’s very tempted to move and sit next to her, hug her (kiss her). It takes everything in him to resist that urge and instead to just let the moment  _ be _ . 

“Thank you,” Colleen says after a moment of silence, finally looking over at him again, and this time not hiding her slight smile. She looks better, happier. He likes that. 

“For what?” 

“ _ Don’t _ . I know what you’re doing, Danny, trying to cheer me up. It helped.” 

“Damn, thought I was more subtle than that,” he says, which just gets an eye roll from her. 

“ _ Please _ . You’re almost never subtle,” she points out. She’s not wrong. 

“I disagree, I  _ can _ be subtle,” he insists, though not seriously. 

“Just quit while you’re ahead,” she says as she stands up, untangling herself from the blanket. 

“Wise.” He gets up off of the floor after giving the dog a quick pet on the head. “Want to work on the flyer now?” 

“Sure.” She moves to sit down on the floor, taking a treat to urge the dog to sit up next to her while Danny gets his phone ready to take a picture. After several blurry attempts because the dog keeps leaning over to lick Colleen’s face, she shifts closer and wraps an arm around him to hold him still, and Danny takes a treat and holds it up next his phone so the dog will at least  _ look _ at the camera. 

He gets a couple of good ones, including one with the dog opened mouthed and his tongue out, the happiest expression on his face. That seems to be as much as he’ll hold still for, because right after he gets that picture, the dog immediately tilts his head again to continue to place kisses on Colleen’s face, and she’s half pulling away and half laughing, and Danny can’t resist taking a couple pictures of that too. 

“Adorable,” Danny says, pulling up the last pictures to show Colleen. “Both of you,” he adds before he can really consider whether or not he should say that, and Colleen looks down a little before hugging the dog again, though not before he notices her blushing a little.  _ I want to kiss her _ , he thinks, quickly followed by  _ this is awkward and I can’t do that. _ Instead he steps back and looks at his phone, sending the pictures to himself to pull up on the computer. It’s a decent enough distraction. 

He grabs the laptop and sits down on the sofa while Colleen stays on the floor with the dog sprawled across her lap, which is  _ also _ adorable because the dog is way too big for that, however they both seem perfectly content with this arrangement. He smiles before looking back down at the computer, pulling up a blank word document to make the flyer in.

After looking through the pictures again he decides that the tongue-out one is the cutest and works best on the flyer, and it’s also the only one that Colleen isn’t really in, which he knows she will probably appreciate if they’re going to be putting up the flyers all over the area. 

“How much information should I put on here? Location found, gender, brief description?” he asks, fiddling with the sizing of the picture before deciding that it’s good, and then tying  _ found dog _ at the top in large letters. 

“Yeah, just that and then contact information, you should probably put both of our numbers on there. Oh, and maybe add his suspected breed mix.” 

“Perfect.” He quickly types up everything before arranging it in a way that looks less messy, with the information neatly laid out and their contact information at the bottom. “What do you think?” He turns the laptop around so that she can see it from where she’s now stuck on the floor with a  _ sleeping _ dog on her lap. 

“It looks great. If this doesn’t work, we’ll figure something else out,” she says, while gently petting the dog. 

“And now for the real question, how many should I print out?” He pulls up the print screen to adjust the settings, frowning. 

“Maybe just do a few for now to start with, you can always print more later.” 

“Makes sense.” He decides to go ahead and just print out fifteen, because that’s enough to put around the general area, and like she’d said he can always print out more as needed. He overs over to the printer to grab one of the copies, which turned out better than he’d expected it to. 

He sits down on the floor next to Colleen, handing her the flyer to look at while he pet’s the dog’s head, smiling when he opens his eyes and looks up at them with that pitiful expression he seems to have mastered. 

“We’re going to find your family,” he tells the dog, giving him one last pet before he moves to stand up. 

 

He startles at the feeling of Colleen reaching over to him, hand wrapping around his wrist just briefly and lingering with a gentle squeeze for just a moment when he looks back down at her and smiles. He sighs when he has to pull away from her to grab the other copies before they scatter across the floor, taking one last look back at Colleen and the dog before he finally steps away. 

Immediately he misses the comforting feeling of her, the light reassurance of her hand around his wrist. If he could, he’d go sit right back down with her, pressed against her side, wrap an arm around her and hug her against his side. Kiss her forehead like he’s been wishing he could do, kiss her  _ properly _ . And for a moment he could pretend that this was all  _ good _ , that things were back to normal again, that maybe this was just their  _ life _ . Sitting inside together on a cold winter day with their dog,  _ happy _ . 

_ That’s not our life, _ he tells himself, as much as he hates it. But that doesn’t stop him from wishing that it was. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost done fshkjfshkjdh


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's literally just more fluff

Colleen spends the next week almost anxiously awaiting a phone call about the dog. They’d put up flyers all around the area that Danny had found him in, posted online everywhere they could with the dog’s information, and then all there was to do was wait. And  _ wait _ . Danny has been just as nervous about it as she’s been. A full week has passed now since they’d done everything, without so much as a single call or text. 

The dog is currently sprawled out on the bed next to Colleen, perfectly content and asleep. At first they’d agreed that they wouldn’t let him up there, only the sofa or a chair if they were in that room, but that rule had quickly been thrown out the window. The dog had started resting his chin on the edge of the bed and looking at them with pitiful, big eyes until they’d given in. Now if either of them are on the bed, the dog is there too, always managing to take up more room than she thought was even possible. Danny, of course, think it’s hilarious. 

He’d gained some of his weight back and no longer looks like skin and bones, and his leg is healing perfectly. His coat even has a healthy shine to it now, both the brushing and a second bath making him look so much better. Any of the former shyness or nervousness he’d had the night Danny brought him home is long gone, and he’s one of the most affectionate dogs she’s ever met. He’d fallen perfectly into their schedules like a natural, like he belonged there. 

“So, I’ve been thinking,” Danny starts, reaching over to pet the dog from his position lying down on the last narrow space left on the bad after the dog had joined them. “We haven’t heard anything, from anyone. I don’t think he’s going to be claimed.” 

Colleen looks over at him and then down at the dog, who has his head resting next to her legs perfectly within reach for petting. She runs her hand over his head, his soft floppy ears, and nods in agreement. “If he were going to be, he probably would’ve been by now. I mean, I called the shelters in the area yesterday where we put the flyers up, and they haven’t had  _ anyone _ coming in looking for a dog that matches his description.” 

“So, uh, we should probably decide what we’re going to do with him,” he says slowly, still petting the dog while looking over at her. 

She frowns, reluctant. “I mean, I guess there’s the shelter near-”

“I was thinking we should keep him,” he cuts her off quickly, almost a nervous sort of smile on his face. “I mean, I mentioned that we should get a dog once we found his family, but now  _ he _ has no family, and I was just thinking that  _ we  _ should keep him.” he hesitates. “I don’t know, maybe it’s a bad idea, but…” 

“Is it bad that I was kind of hoping no one would call?” She asks with a slight laugh,  _ relief _ letting the tension bleed out of her. “We  _ should _ keep him, I just didn’t want to suggest it if you weren’t on the same page.” 

Danny’s entire face lights up as he smiles. “No, I was hoping no one would either. I don’t think it would be that much of a problem, he’s been handling our busy schedule and time away like a champion.” He sits up as he gets more excited about the idea. “We can get him a proper collar, with a name tag and everything.” 

“We can make it work but… yeah, we should definitely keep him. At this point I really don’t think I  _ could _ turn him over to a shelter,” she admits, because after the past week and a half she’s become far too attached to him despite her best efforts  _ not _ to. The dog is too soft and lovable. 

“He needs a name now, then,” he points out. “You said you wanted to do something Japanese? You should pick one out.” 

“I told you, we have to agree on it,” she reminds him, though she does start thinking about it, considering some options. 

“Well, I don’t know any Japanese names, so I’ll leave the  _ coming up with a name _ part to you,” he says, which seems fair. She shuts her laptop and looks back down at the dog, trying to decide what would be a fitting name for him. 

“I have an idea,” she starts after a moment. “Kaito.” 

“Oh, I like that one. Any reason for it?” he seems genuinely curious, turning his whole attention to her. 

“It more or less means  _ ocean _ . It kind of reminds me of Hokkaido,” she explains. 

“Well, I think it fits him,” he says, saying the name a couple of times while he continues to pet the dog, and seems satisfied with it. 

“It’s better than  _ Cuddlefloof _ ,” she can’t help but point out, making him laugh. 

“It absolutely is.” He smiles again. “We have a  _ dog _ .” 

 

\-----   
  


The thing they learn the quickest is that Kaito has a  _ lot _ of energy, especially as his leg heals. She figures it makes sense, going by his suspected breed mix, that he would. Both are very smart, very active breeds, and Kaito is no exception. Since he’s only a few years old, she thinks that he’s still got a touch of puppyish energy on top of his normal energy, and while she thinks he’s adorable, by the time he’s running around the apartment it’s a  _ little _ old. 

A  _ learning _ experience. That’s what Danny has been calling it, which is true, since neither of them have ever owned a dog. What they’d figured out is that he needs at least one longer walk to get all of that energy out on top of a few quick ones periodically throughout the day. Which isn’t really a  _ problem _ \- he’s been able to tag along with her to the center a few times when she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop by during the day - except that today it’s snowing a little and miserably cold and Colleen is  _ almost _ wishing she’d just let Danny take him by himself, like he’d offered to. She really hates being cold. 

Watching Kaito trot out in front of them and occasionally look back with his tongue out, floppy eared, darling expression makes braving the cold worth it, though. It’s hard to regret being out on the walk when he’s so clearly enjoying it, and Danny is too, and it’s the middle of the day on Saturday and they’ve still got plenty of weekend left to enjoy. It’s also hard to ignore the fact that she’s  _ happy _ , light; that she can’t help but laugh when Kaito stops so fast to sniff something that he almost falls over, and after that stops and comes back to them for head scratches before quickly moving out in front of them again.

_ Keeping him is the best decision we’ve made _ , she thinks. 

Danny looks completely content and relaxed as he walks beside her, keeping a firm grip on Kaito’s leash as the he tugs at it to get ahead. He’s not even wearing that heavy of a coat, but he seems completely unbothered by the snowflakes falling around and on them. She shakes her head, trying and failing at not smiling a little. 

“What?” he asks, glancing over at her with a smile before turning his attention back to where they’re walking and making sure Kaito doesn’t bother anyone, as he tends to do now that he seems to have lost his general fear of strangers. 

“It’s completely unfair that cold like this doesn’t bother you as much,” she says, because she’s got a long sleeved shirt on with a hoodie over that, and  _ then _ her coat, gloves, and a hat and she’s  _ still _ freezing. She’s never been the type to appreciate the cold - the warmer months have always been her favorite, and the bleakness of winter that always seems to drag on forever is her least favorite time of the year. 

“I’m just used to it,” he points out, shrugging, though he’s smiling a little.  _ Before _ , he’d always gotten some amusement out of how cold she always was, and had always made it his sole mission to make sure she wasn’t. 

“Yeah, and I’ve lived in New York for  _ years _ and I’m still not used to it. You’d think I would be by now,” she replies as she rubs her hands together as if it’ll help. 

“Here,” Danny starts before passing her Kaito’s leash and immediately wrapping his arms tightly around her without any sort of warning, despite her brief protest when she realizes what he’s doing. “Warmth.” 

It’s so sudden and so  _ Danny _ that she can’t help but laugh. His arms are firmly wrapped around her now, pulling her back against his chest with his chin resting on her shoulder, leaning her head against hers. It  _ is _ warmer, and she’d be lying if she said that she didn’t appreciate the gesture or their current position. The rational part of her knows that she should pull away, and stop this, but the other part of her is laughing along with him when they stop walking so that he can hug her even tighter. 

Kaito pulls at the leash suddenly before realizing that they’ve stopped, and she watches as he trots back up to them and sits down at her feet, pressing himself against her legs as if he’s trying to copy Danny. She laughs a little at that, too, because he’s looking up at her with those pitiful brown eyes and she’s a bit warmer now because of him as well. 

She  _ knows _ they should move, because this is ridiculous, and they’re standing in the middle of the sidewalk and Danny is hugging her while Kaito is still sitting practically on her feet to lean against her. People are grumbling because they’re in the way, but she just shuts her eyes and leans her weight back into Danny, his arm around her waist tightening when she does.  _ I don’t want to move just yet _ , she decides, because she  _ is _ warmer now, and she can tell that Danny is still smiling, and it’s a  _ good _ feeling. And when he somehow manages to hug her tighter, she thinks that the irritated people can just get over themselves and walk around them for a minute more. 

It’s almost overwhelming, being wrapped up in his arms again after so long.  _ I love him _ , she thinks, before the gravity of  _ what _ she’s just thought hits her like a punch. It’s not something she’s been allowing herself to think about, because she’s not supposed to be, but it feels so purely like the truth that she can’t really deny it. Almost abruptly her mouth goes dry, and his arms around her start to feel a little suffocating. She gently starts to pull away from him before she can think about any of it too much, and he reluctantly pulls away. 

“Better?” he asks as he steps back. 

“Yeah. I’ll be even better when we can get back home,” she points out, because they’ve been out for a while now and Kaito finally seems to be starting to wear down. “We can still stop for tea though.” 

“Of course.” That was generally their routine for Kaito’s longer walks, especially when it’s cold like this. 

She turns around and then pauses to untangle Kaito’s leash from around her legs - she’d turned one way, and he’d gone the other - before he starts trotting off again in front of them, tail wagging, though he finally lacks that general bursting energy from earlier that had pushed them to get out of the apartment. 

Danny takes his place back at her side, reaching out and grabbing her free hand without even seeming to think about the action, wrapping both of his hands around hers to warm it up. It’s hard to ignore the  _ fond _ feeling in her chest at the gesture, and though for a moment she considers pulling her hand away because she  _ should _ , she doesn’t. 

The walk is comfortably quiet for a few minutes before they reach the little coffee shop, and Danny quickly heads inside while she steps to the side with Kaito, leaning against the wall. He looks up at her with his soft eyes and she can’t help but smile, crouching down so she’s level with him and petting his head, smiling when he licks her cheek. It’s  _ weird _ how easy and quickly she’s come to love him, when he’s only been in their lives for a short amount of time. He’s just very easy to love. 

“At least it’s safe to love you,” she tells him, which she knows he doesn’t understand but he wags his tail harder at her words anyway as if he does. She leads her head against his briefly a she hugs him, burying her face in his warm fur while she waits for Danny. 

By the time he comes back a few minutes later, it’s started to snow a little harder and the wind feels sharp. As they start moving again she picks up their pace a little more because frankly, she’s sick of the cold, and now Danny doesn’t look too thrilled about it either. Kaito just seems happy to be moving, going by how hard is tail is wagging. 

Finally stepping through the door into their building is a relief, the warm air welcoming after nearly an hour outside. Kaito takes the lead as they head up the stairs to their apartment, already knowing exactly where to go as he practically drags her along behind him in his excitement, circling excitedly at her feet when she stops to unlock the door. 

As soon as it’s open she drops the leash and lets him run inside, following behind him at a slower pace before shutting the door behind Danny. She takes a minute to remove her shoes and coat before stepping further into the apartment, peeling off her gloves before setting them and the hat down on the table. 

“Uh, here,” Danny says, holding one of the cups out towards her while simultaneously trying to grab Kaito’s leash. “This one’s yours.” 

“Thanks.” She tries not to laugh when he finally  _ does _ catch Kaito and just ends up sitting on the floor with him, petting him enthusiastically while Kaito places very slobbery kisses all over his face. Danny doesn’t seem to care, laughing and clearly delighted as he returns the dog’s affection from his place now laying down on the floor. She can’t ignore the burst of warmth in her chest at the sight, the way it’s impossible not to smile because of them, because of  _ Danny _ . His laughter, his bright smile, the way he grins up at her as she steps past them. 

After a minute he gets up to go take a shower, so she heads over to the sofa and sits down, patting the cushion beside her in invitation. Kaito immediately jumps up next to her and instead of sitting down, scoots over to sit on her lap even though he’s way too big. He halfway succeeds, opting for only his front half actually being on her lap, before he rests his head up against her chest so that his cold nose is pressed against her chin. She places a quick kiss on his nose before settling back, wrapping an arm across his shoulders and soaking up the warmth. 

She finally takes a drink of the tea now that it’s not too hot, and of course it’s exactly what she’d been wanting even though she’d forgotten to tell Danny. That warm burst of affection in her chest isn’t ever going to go away, she thinks. 

_ You love him and that’s a problem _ , she tells herself, but it’s hard not to. She’s been telling herself that she can ignore it, deny it with everything in her, do anything to pretend that the feelings aren’t still prominently there. That she could somehow make this work without those feelings becoming overwhelming again, but right now it’s about the opposite of that. That same warm, fierce, but gentle love is pushing at her chest again and she tries and tries to hate it, but that’s impossible. 

_ I love him _ .

She sighs, looking down at Kaito, wishing she didn’t feel so lost about it all. “What am I supposed to do now?” she asks him, mostly so she can say the words out loud, as if that’ll make the answer more apparent.

_ I love him _ . 

  
(she’s not sure if she ever stopped)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ngl colleen always being cold and danny finding ways to rectify that is my favorite little headcanon because That's Soft™


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> misty and colleen just giving each other no bullshit talks sometimes when the other needs it the most is a good friendship

It’s the middle of the afternoon on a Friday, and the apartment is almost  _ too _ quiet. Colleen is sitting cross-legged on the floor with her back against the sofa trying to get work done, but it’s a weak attempt. Kaito had come over a few minutes ago and flopped his head on her lap upside down, looking up at her with the cutest expression, which she loves but he’s also  _ extremely  _ distracting. 

An abrupt, unexpected knock at the door has Kaito springing to his feet and running for the door, barking and growling as he stands in front of it. He looks every bit like he’s ready to attack whoever is on the other side of the door, and he  _ does _ have an intimidating look when he’s like this, though she knows he won’t  _ actually _ hurt whoever it is. One pet and he absolutely melts. 

“Who is it?” she calls as she gets to her feet, hurrying across the room to grab Kaito’s collar and pull him back, though he’s still growling. 

“Misty.” 

“Uh, hang on-” she pulls him back several feet from the door before giving Misty the  _ okay _ to come in. Kaito lets out another sharp bark when Misty steps in, pulling against Colleen’s hold, growling a little as Misty shuts the door behind her. 

“So this is the new addition?” Misty asks, smiling just a little at the dog, who relaxes when Colleen crouches down and wraps an arm around him to make sure he doesn’t try to jump forward again. 

“Yeah, this is Kaito. He’s not really going to do anything, he just likes to try and intimidate people when they come in. He’s all bark and no bite,” she says, unable to keep the fond note out of her voice. “There should be a bag of treats on the counter, if you get a couple of those he’ll warm up to you instantly.” 

“He’s pretty cute,” Misty comments as she goes and grabs the treats as Colleen suggested before returning to where Kaito is sitting and watching her almost suspiciously. As soon as Misty offers him the treats, he’s wagging his tail as hard as he can and licking her hand, trying to jump up on her in his excitement. Colleen just smiles as he works out his excitement by running a few laps around Misty’s legs, pushing at her hand again with his nose to check for more treats, before he apparently decides that she’s good and comes trotting back over to stand pressed up against Colleen’s legs. 

“I didn’t know you were planning on coming by, you should’ve called me. I could’ve at least had something made for lunch,” Colleen says, finally turning her full attention to Misty now that Kaito has settled.

“I have the day off, and I was in the area anyway, figured I might as well stop by and see the dog, see what all the fuss was about.” She just shakes her head, looking amused. “I really shouldn’t have been surprised that you took in and then kept a stray dog. That’s  _ exactly _ what anyone should’ve expected out of you two.”    


“We weren’t  _ planning _ to keep him, not at the start,” she explains as she heads over to the sofa, Misty following her. “We tried to find his owner with no luck. By then we just… didn’t really like the idea of getting rid of him. Listen, the  _ last _ thing I thought I would be anytime soon was a dog owner. Danny’s right though, I have a soft spot for the strays. I mean, look at him, he’s adorable.” 

“I thought he’d be smaller,” Misty comments as she sits down on the other end of the sofa, since the space next to Colleen quickly became occupied by Kaito. 

“He seemed smaller when we found him, but now that he’s gained back his weight he’s looking a lot better.” 

“And now you two own a dog together,” Misty says, giving Colleen a  _ look _ . “And live together, share a bed…"

“I thought you came here to see the dog, not talk about Danny and I.” 

“I did, mostly. But… you mind if we have a talk, no bullshit?” Something about the tone in Misty’s voice makes Colleen straighten up a little, and she tries to ignore that nervous twist in her chest as she replies. 

“Sure.” 

“Do you realize how  _ weird _ your living situation is right now?” Misty starts, which… wasn’t exactly what Colleen had been expected. 

“I mean, it’s not the  _ most _ ideal situation, but-"

“You’re living with your ex-boyfriend, who I think we both know is still head over heels in love with you. This is, of course,  _ after _ he hurt you by leaving without warning for a year.” she just shakes her head again. “Now you’re living together, sharing a bed, you have a  _ dog _ . I just have to ask… you realize this isn’t healthy, right?” 

Colleen looks down, resisting the sudden urge to get up and leave because that wouldn’t actually help at all. Sure, she  _ knows _ it’s not the best situation they could be in, and if she thinks too much about all the complicated feelings involved then  _ yeah _ , something is a bit wrong with it all. But it’s been working, and they’ve been doing okay. Since he got back she’s been able to convince herself that she could ignore the feelings she still has for Danny, bury them. And it’s been working, more or less, though definitely  _ less _ recently. 

“He didn’t leave  _ to _ hurt me, if that makes any difference.” 

“You told me about how he was looking for answers, something about your ancestor… maybe he didn’t leave to hurt you, but he still did. He  _ knew _ this would hurt you, and he left anyway, and I think you know that.” Misty points out. “Look, it was clear that you were both struggling with your relationship towards the end of that whole thing with Davos, and it doesn’t really matter necessarily who was at fault for that situation - but you two living together again pretty much the moment he got back is  _ weird _ , and not very healthy for either of you.” 

“We were both at fault, okay? Him leaving was really shitty, the  _ way _ he did it, but like I said, he didn’t do it  _ to _ hurt me. Afterwards, when we were talking again, it almost felt more like it was  _ for  _  me, in a backwards sort of way, maybe. I needed space, and he realized that, before  _ I  _ even did. After a bit, I realized that he needed space too. And I’m not saying that that justifies him leaving the  _ way _ he did - it doesn't - but his intentions weren’t necessarily in a  _ bad _ place.”

“I figured there was more to the story than you told me before,” Misty comments. 

“The letter he left me, it wasn’t just him explaining what he was going to look for, that was just the part I told you. It was also him saying he loves me, and it wasn’t a permanent  _ goodbye _ so much as it was more of a… promise. That he’d be back.” She sighs, wishing the pressure in her chest would ease. “Yeah, I was angry with him. It took me a… long time to get past that. But I don’t really think it’s all as bad as you think it is. We’re okay, Misty.” 

“Are you, though? We both know he’s still in love with you, that’s been established. What you just said about the letter further proves that. And I think you know that  _ you _ are too.  _ Anyone _ can see that, Colleen, you’re not exactly good at hiding it.” 

“Yeah,” she mumbles softly, not  _ really _ wanting to admit it, especially not to someone else. “But if I love him then he can hurt me, again,” she points out, still not looking over at Misty, that twist in her chest getting tighter and tighter. “I’ve forgiven him for leaving, but that… I don’t ever want to go through that again. At least…  _ this _ is working, more or less.” 

“He could hurt you anyway, because even if you say you don’t  _ love _ him, you care for him. I don’t think he’s planning on hurting you again, though. I say all of this as your friend, Colleen, okay? But this… it’s not healthy, at all, and I just don’t think you’ve really had the perspective needed to realize that.” 

_ She’s right.  _

_ I don’t want her to be right _ . 

When Colleen doesn’t answer, Misty continues. “And you’re so afraid of being hurt by him again, but have you realized that that goes both ways? You have just as much power to hurt him as he does to hurt you. Do you trust him?”

“Yes,” she replies tiredly, hating that question. She misses when the answer to that question was an unwavering, unshaken  _ yes _ , rather than a  _ yes _ hesitant with creeping fear. Trusting people always seems to go wrong for her. 

“You either need to keep him and give both of you a chance to be happy and in love, like you know you are, or you need to give him up and break it off because neither of you are capable of being just friends. And letting him stay at the apartment and both of you dancing around this is just hurting both of you.” Her voice is kind, and Colleen knows she means well. And she’s  _ right _ . 

Colleen leans forward and rests her head on her hands, taking a moment to breathe until the twist in her chest eases a little. The options are perfectly clear, laid out simply by Misty. Tell him that she loves him, or break it off completely.  _ I don’t think that we were ever meant to be just friends _ , she thinks.  _ And I don’t know what I’d do without him in my life.  _

“I thought we agreed a while ago that we’d never be the people to talk about boys and relationships,” she can’t help but say, which just makes Misty laugh abruptly, causing Kaito to startle briefly beside them. 

“Fair enough. I’ve said my piece, just think about it, okay?” 

“Yeah, I will.” she hesitates. “Thank you.” 

“Any time,” Misty replies as she stands up. “Unfortunately, I do have to go. Other things to do today, I just wanted to stop by.” She pauses briefly to pet Kaito again, who pushes his head happily against her hand until she moves away. 

“You’re welcome anytime, you know that,” Colleen says, trailing after Misty as she prepares to leave. 

“See you soon.” 

As soon as Misty leaves, the apartment is too quiet again. Colleen lingers near the door for a minute before heading back to sit down with Kaito again, briefly considering taking him out on a walk just to get moving. She can’t quite find the motivation to get back up again, so she just shifts closer to Kaito and pets him until he rests his head on her lap in contentment. 

_ Love him or break it off _ . 

As much as she wants to ignore it, wishes she could, she  _ knows _ that what Misty said it right, she just hasn’t wanted to consider it. If she thinks about it too much then her own logic starts to fall apart, and all the flaws of their current situation stand out too clearly. They’re  _ not _ in a relationship, not like before, but somehow they  _ have _ still been living together and have a dog. Sharing a bed that more mornings than not, they wake up curled together in some way and just pretend it didn’t happen.  _ That’s not normal _ , she thinks, which she believes she  _ knew _ but just hasn’t wanted to acknowledge. 

She also knows that by now, she can’t really imagine a life without him in it anymore. They’ve been together through bad things and worse things, always at each other’s side no matter what. The year he’d been gone had been manageable, but an important piece of her life had so clearly been missing, an aching absence on the loneliest days. He was her partner, in every sense of the word, and life just doesn’t seem to work right without him there. It’s all twisted up and not right, but when he’s there, things make sense. Cutting him out of her life would be impossible, they’re too far bonded for that. 

_ I have to tell him _ , she thinks slowly, not even sure  _ how _ she’d say it.  _ Maybe we went wrong before because we  _ didn’t _ say it _ . She sighs, looking down at Kaito and focuses on petting him again, though it’s not the best distraction.  _ I’m not going to let us do that again _ . In a way, it feels like a promise. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter is the last one!!


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cliche!! fluff! love confessions!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here you go cliche cheesy fluff it's what we all want anyway

Danny has been acting strange all morning. He’d been happy enough when they’d gotten up late that morning, talking about maybe heading to the gym for a bit before taking Kaito out on his longer walk, and then something about getting dinner that evening and picking out a movie to watch. She’d just listened while trying not to feel  _ weird _ about it all, about how normal this felt, while also trying to fight back the slight smile at his enthusiasm. 

Now, though, he’s leaning back against the kitchen island frowning, all of that earlier enthusiasm gone. He’d stepped out of the bedroom for a minute to take a phone call and hadn’t come back in, even after she’d heard him stop talking. After a few minutes of silence she finally gets up to follow him, stands in the doorway of the bedroom watching him warily. He doesn’t even look up at her when she takes a couple steps closer, just continues staring down at the phone in his hands with a noticeable, tired slouch to his shoulders and an almost upset look on his face. 

“Something wrong?” she asks after another tight moment of silence where he still doesn’t look at her. 

“I have to leave again,” he starts, and for a second Colleen feels like she can’t breathe, like the oxygen has been sucked from the door. He rushes to continue, finally looking up at her. “It’s just for a few weeks, some business thing with Ward that I couldn’t get out of.” He looks almost guilty telling her this, but he quickly covers it up with a tired kind of smile that she  _ thinks _ is meant to be reassuring. It’s  _ not _ , it’s not at all. 

“Oh,” she prays her voice doesn’t shake, “okay.” That doesn’t seem like enough so she quickly fumbles for something else to say but it all feels empty. “It’ll be way too quiet around here without you.” 

“You’ve got Kaito, you two will be okay without me for a few weeks,” he smiles again, but it’s strained. “I expect pictures of him daily, by the way.” 

“Of course you do,” she replies, quickly looking back over at Kaito, who is currently sprawled out on their bed. 

“I have to leave today.” 

_ Oh _

“Such a short notice,” she mumbles, almost hoping he doesn’t hear it, hear the shakiness in her voice, though he does. 

“I didn’t find out until today that it was something I couldn’t get out of. Because believe me, this is  _ not _ something I want to be doing. I tried to find a way out, but,” he shrugs. “Guess I can only avoid so many things like this. I, uh, really need to pack.” 

She watches wordlessly as he slowly walks past her and back into the bedroom, and she turns as he does. He digs out one of his bags from traveling and sets it on the bed, opening it up before he turns to the drawers to pick out clothes. While he’s already said that it’s just for a few weeks, she doesn’t want him to leave, not  _ again _ . 

_ i promised myself i wouldn’t let him leave again without telling him how i feel _

She wraps her arms tight enough across her stomach that it hurts a little, biting her cheek and weighing the pros and cons of it all before wondering why she even bothers. It’s useless. There’s no  _ easy _ way to do this, and there never will be. All she knows is that if she lets him walk out of the apartment without telling him, she’ll regret it for the rest of her life. 

_ Just say it _ . 

“I love you.” 

He stops mid-movement, and she can see him turn towards her but she can’t quite bring herself to look at him, that’s  _ too _ much, and her heart is racing in her chest and she feels vaguely sick. 

“Colleen-” 

“No, just…  _ don’t _ . I love you.” She pauses, tightening her arms across her stomach. “And I… don’t know if I ever stopped loving you, which is the  _ problem _ , and I’ve been trying to tell myself that I can’t because you hurt me, Danny. You did.” She finally looks up at him and the expression on his face is a mix of relief and sadness and something aching that makes her want to hug him. 

“That wasn’t okay. I don’t know, I just, I was afraid of that so I’ve just been stupidly pretending that there was nothing but there is.” She hesitates. “I talked to Misty the other day and she made me realize that this all so stupid. That it’s just hurting both of us, all of this…  _ faking _ . Because I think we both know that we can’t just… be  _ friends _ who live together.” 

“I love you too, you know that, right?” he asks, so earnestly that it makes her heart ache. “More than anything else.” 

“I know.” 

“I should have told you that more before, I know that. But I’ve loved you for a long time now, and that’s never changed.” 

“I think we both needed the break, to think about how to move forward, to fix things. I’ve done enough thinking, now,” she says, offering a hesitant smile as he walks up to her, opening his arms in a clear invitation. 

Stepping into his arms again feels like  _ home _ . It feels like the pieces clicking back together, making her life whole again in the feeling of his arms wrapping around her. She’s been wondering if they could still fit together, if they could make it works. She thinks, now, that they can. For the first time since he got back she allows herself to hug him back as tightly as she can and buries her head against his chest, trying not to cry. 

“I love you so much,” Danny says, pulling her even tighter as he tucks his head against her shoulder and she leans her weight into him. 

She doesn’t have the words to reply, too caught up in the insurmountable  _ relief _ she feels in every part of herself. Maybe they were never meant to drift apart for too long, always meant to come back together. Complementary, contradictory.  _ Yin and yang _ , she thinks, remembering his words, the letter. 

“I think you’re right, that we just… aren’t really meant to be  _ only _ friends,” Danny says, his words a little muffled and she can feels his lips move where her neck and shoulder meet, a comforting feeling against her skin. “Not that I wouldn't have tried, of course. I don’t think I’ve been very…  _ subtle _ about still loving you, but even if you decided you never wanted  _ this _ again, it would’ve been too hard to cut you out completely. You’re still the most important person in my life.” 

“I’ve missed this,” she mumbles against his chest, knowing that she’d be perfectly content to just stay here forever, warm and content with Danny wrapped up in her arms as tightly as she can hold him. 

“Me too.” 

She reluctantly steps back a little, her hands resting at his waist, not wanting to be apart from him, not anymore. He wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her back in until they’re pressed together again, leaning down and placing a lingering kiss against her forehead as she shuts her eyes. 

For only a second she hesitates before pulling back again, but this time to wrap her arms around his neck as she pushes him onto her toes, kissing him for the first time in far too long. It’s better than their last one, which at the time she hadn’t known had been their goodbye. Instead of sad, reluctant, this one is soft and hopeful and he’s smiling into it like he can’t help himself, which makes all of it better. 

When she pulls back he rests his forehead against hers, and she keeps her arms up around his neck, not ready to fully pull away from him yet. She sighs, remembering what he’d been doing before this, can still see the open bag sitting on the bed when she opens her eyes, a sharp push back into reality. 

“You still need to pack-”

“No,” he says, cutting her off, pulling back just enough to look at her. 

“The trip-”

“It’s not important,” he replies, shrugging. “I mean, it kind of it, but it’s something Ward can manage without me.  _ This _ ,” he says, gently moving one hand to cup her face, smiling brightly, “is more important. There’s no way in hell I’m leaving you again after this.” 

“Ward’s going to be pissed,” Colleen points out, though that’s really the least of her concerns. She feels light and  _ happy _ , and Danny can’t seem to stop smiling. 

“Ward will get over it, I can deal with hat later.” He pauses before pulling her closer into him again. “For now, I’m just going to kiss you.” 

She smiles against his lips. “Sounds good to me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent probably way too long writing this whole thing but I had a lot of fun. I am writing more set post-this fic but not sure when/if stuff will be posted because I'm real busy right now.

**Author's Note:**

> since the whole thing is already finished I really just plan to post 2x a week so we'll see how that goes
> 
> if you're in the mood for 45,000+ words of often tropey or cliche stuff then, welcome, i guess


End file.
